Tag Archives: body

General Media Theory

Respect the Balance: The Substance, Body, & Grotesque Realism

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⚠️ Spoilers ahead ⚠️

Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself?

The Substance (2024) is a body horror film directed by Coralie Fargeat. This cautionary tale follows Elisabeth Sparkle, a film star past her prime who undergoes a de-aging drug called The Substance: an injectable serum that produces a younger, more “beautiful” clone named Sue. Although both bodies don’t outwardly appear the same, genetically they are one. 

You must alternate through both bodies no more than seven days each. Only by following the rules will the process work, but for Elisabeth/Sue, the disrespect of the balance only produces grotesque results

The concept of the body will act as the vessel for this post in tandem with the film, commenting on the violence that occurs when the contemporary projection of what looks beautiful overtakes the body and embodied experience. While the film hyperbolizes this destructive process, the nature of Fargeat’s metaphor still rings true: the abuse of beauty never ends well, only in the degradation of self and body. I will primarily extract ideas from the perspective of Body, Bernadette Wegenstein’s chapter in Critical Terms for Media Studies, in conjunction with Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the Grotesque Body. 

Body by Bernadette Wegenstein

Wegenstein primes the chapter by establishing the body as a medium of experience, a site that is not merely a static object but a dynamic process (19). This point of the body as a process introduces the difference between “having” a body versus “being” a body, the latter of which becomes reframed as embodiment. 

Embodiment is the first person perspective of living in a body, it is the process of how we experience it (Wegenstein 20). Elisabeth’s body, and women in entertainment at large, becomes spotlighted as an “object of aesthetic interest” that, once a certain age is reached, becomes “undesirable” for general audiences (Wegenstein 20). She gets terminated on her 50th birthday from her fitness TV show, thus eliciting an embodied experience of self-loathing after having a career built upon society’s beauty standards. The scene of Elisabeth getting ready for a date captures her physical, tormented embodiment as she aggressively wipes away at her makeup and literally tries to get out of her own skin.

Wegenstein also affirms that “when interacting in chat rooms, dating platforms, or massive multiplayer role playing games… we can take on personas that differ from our own mundane embodied selves” (28). In a way, Sue is Elisabeth’s mask that similarly ties to the digital platforms that Wegenstein lists. Through all of that bodily trauma of taking the Substance does Elisabeth find happiness in Sue, but only when she is living in Sue’s body. Sue’s embodiment is night and day from Elisabeth’s — she feels confident and respected whereas, in her own original body, she hides away in self-contempt. Elisabeth, as Sue, gets her old life on the TV show back from the same older, male producers. 

“Whether in private or for the mass audiences of reality TV, people are undergoing surgical intervention… in the hopes of altering their bodies to… match their “inner body” expectations to the exterior body images circulated by the media. This cultural obsession with bodily perfection now transcends the actual procedures of surgical modification, shaping a “cosmetic gaze” through which we look at our own… bodies with an awareness of how they could be changed” (Wegenstein 29).

With the cosmetic gaze in mind, Elisabeth’s body becomes the very site of transformation from Elisabeth to Sue. Elisabeth’s cells split and mutate through a very graphic sequence in the film of her body convulsing in her bathroom after taking the Substance. The process concludes by splitting open a spine-length slit across her back to essentially “birth” Sue. Elisabeth has become a shell of herself to make way for Sue’s body. Elisabeth’s body lays dormant on the floor with the gaping tear on her back, symbolizing the drastic lengths that people will take to achieve the perfect appearance.

Grotesque Realism & Grotesque Body by Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher who authored Rabelais and His World, a book about the Renaissance and French writer, François Rabelais. The idea originates from folk culture, specifically from the carnivalesque and its everchanging, temporal nature. It’s expressed through a focus on the (grotesque) body, making this concept and Wegenstein’s text on body one in the same. It’s a process.

Within the text, Bakhtin coins the grotesque style (and by extension, grotesque body) as their own terms with their own fundamentals. 

  • Metamorphosis: “The grotesque image reflects a phenomenon in transformation, an as yet unfinished metamorphosis, of death and birth, growth and becoming” (Bakhtin 24). Once again, the film presents Elisabeth’s transformation into Sue as the young, hot counterpart — only this is a short-lived high for Elisabeth/Sue by the end of the film. Another fundamental is showing two bodies in one, “the one giving birth and dying, the other conceived, generated, and born” (Bakhtin 26). The story features numerous processes of rebirth (Elisabeth to Sue) and self-death (Sue killing the part of herself she hates, Elisabeth).
  • Degradation: “The essential principle of grotesque realism is degradation, that is, lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract; it is a transfer to the material level, to the sphere of earth and body in their indissoluble unity” (Bakhtin 19). Going against the seven day rule, Elisabeth’s body, once reinhabited, deteriorates into a severely aged version of herself. A desperate Sue, fresh from now killing Elisabeth, is also falling apart and resorts to creating an entirely new clone: Monstro Elisasue, a fusion of the two. She presents herself live in front of an audience showing the degradation occurred, a callback to the carnival origins. The film ends in a bloodbath that hoses down the audience as a true scene of horror, to Elisabeth/Sue’s final form: a fleshy blob that finally gets wiped out of existence.
  • Exaggeration: “Exaggeration, hyperbolism, and excessiveness are generally considered fundamental attributes of grotesque style” (Bakhtin 303). Even aside from the exaggerated nature of Monstro Elisasue, there are portions in the film that feel extremely heightened, especially scenes concerning food. There’s Dennis Quaid’s shrimp eating scene using up-close visual and disturbing use of audio. Or when Sue pulls out a chicken leg out of her butt. These parts make up for a squeamishly exaggerated art style.

To age is an impending beast. But looking to the future we’re headed down, a future where bodies are easily modifiable and youthfulness is commodified, it makes us reconsider what it means to get older. Wegenstein’s Body and Bakhtin’s Grotesque Realism reveal how The Substance anticipates the risks. In the end, the film suggests that the journey forward lies not in transcending the limits of our bodies, but in reframing how we live with it.

Works Cited:

Mikhail Bakhtin. Rabelais and His World. Indiana University Press, 1984.

Mitchell, W. J. T., and Mark B. N. Hansen. Critical Terms for Media Studies. The University Of Chicago Press, 2010.

Images:

People and FILMGRAB.

General Media Theory

The Digital Self is NOT Separate From the Physical Self. Here’s Why.

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Media theory often starts with technologies. Cameras, screens, networks, and books are all treated as central agents of mediation, the things that shape perception, distribute information, and structure social lives. Yet, long before any technological medium emerges, humans already inhabit a medium that grounds all experience: the body. The body is not merely a vessel that encounters media; it’s the first site through which the world becomes sensible. Every medium, no matter how advanced or “immaterial”, ultimately depends on embodied perception. To truly understand media, then, we have to begin not with devices but with embodiment itself. 

The distinction between body and embodiment is critical here. The body can be approached as an object, after all, it is a visible, bounded thing with physical characteristics. As it appears from the outside, the body is seemingly stable and fixed. Embodiment, however, refers to the lived experience of having and being a body. The sensations, emotions, memories, and movements that give human existence its texture and flavour. Embodiment is contextual, dynamic, and constantly changing. It is through embodiment that perception becomes meaningful, and that media first takes shape. 

What our digital culture reveals, ironically, is not the disappearance of embodiment but its constant negotiation. Through the 20th and 21st centuries, new technologies promised a kind of disembodiment. With the invention of the internet and its numerous features, we have the possibility of creating entirely new identities, freed from physical constraints and distributed across avatars, usernames, posts, and profiles. Online, people can imagine themselves unburdened by the limits of appearance, ability, or geography. Gender can become a role performed in a textual or visual space, selfhood can multiply into curated personas, and new “people” can be created out of thin air by the click of a few buttons. You can decide at any given moment that the person you want to be online is opposite to who you really are, physically. This ideology of disembodiment suggests to people that digital technologies offer something beyond the physical constraints of the body. 

However, I would argue that in practice these technologies intensify the role of embodiment rather than diminish it. Even in “virtual” environments, our bodies respond in physical ways while we’re experiencing them. We have physical shifts like our postures changing to best adapt in viewing the screens, our eyes adapt to stare at bright screens and pixels for longer periods of time, our heart rates rise and fall as we experience the media in front of us. Like playing a virtual reality game, we have to physically embody the character in the game in order to properly play virtually, and our body reacts to the screen we’re seeing through VR lenses like we are really there. We have emotional responses ranging from anxiety, excitement, desire, envy, joy, sadness, and more registering in the body. Could you recognize and count how many emotions you flip through while you mindlessly scroll through the news, or Instagram, or TikTok? The rhythms of tapping, scrolling, and pausing all become habitual motor patterns that are cemented in your muscle memory, your fingers immediately assuming their positions when holding your phone and starting the pattern all over again every time you pick up the phone. Do you have to think about what to do with your hands when using your phone? Does your pinky finger have a small dent in the side of it, creating the perfect fit for your phone to rest on? Does your heart rate rise when you get a notification? 

The digital self is NOT separate from the physical self.

The digital self depends on and leaves traces on the embodied subject who sustains it. AKA, you. Far from escaping the body, we discover that digital media reconfigures our sense of it. This apparent tension becomes clearer when we examine the question of materiality. A common fear is that digital media detaches meaning from material substance, that the shift from paper to screens, from objects to streams, from physical archives to remote servers and digital files, signals a broader cultural “dematerialization”. While this is true, as an estimated 90% of modern human history would vanish if the internet died, even the most digital forms of media are materially grounded. A streaming platform still requires bodies capable of hearing and seeing, a VR headset must sit on an actual face, and an algorithm only functions by registering your microgestures of attention and habit. The infrastructure of digital media is itself profoundly physical, from data centers to batteries to our sensory organs that absorb and interpret the output. If digital culture appears immaterial, it is only because the material supports have been submerged beneath more seamless interfaces. 

Recognizing the primacy of the body reframes how we can understand media technologies. Each new medium can be viewed as an extension of bodily capacity as writing extends memory, photography extends vision, audio technologies extend hearing, and social platforms extend presence or attention. These extensions do not replace our embodied perception; they amplify, reconfigure, and externalize it. As McLuhan famously argued, “the medium is the message”, but this motto takes on a deeper significance if we acknowledge that the boy is the medium behind all the messages. The ways we hear, touch, see, and move through the world shape the kinds of media we create, and in turn, those media reshape how we imagine our bodies. 

Ultimately, grounding media theory in embodiment reveals that media are not external systems we occasionally interact with. They are environments we inhabit, extensions we live through, and processes that reorganize perception at its root. Before images, words, signals, or data arrive, they must pass through the sensing, remembering, and interpreting body. The body is not simply where mediation happens, it itself is a medium. Our body is dynamic, responsive, and continually shaped by the technologies we encounter every day. If media are ways of structuring experience, the embodiment is the original architecture. It remains the template through which all of the media we absorb must pass, and the anchor that keeps even the most virtual environments tethered to the material conditions of life. Media theories that forget the body risk forgetting the very ground of perception itself. To properly understand the media, we begin where experience begins: Our Bodies.

TLDR:

Media begins and ends with our bodies, because it’s all a big tangled mess that we’re dependent on, and that’s dependent on us. #interlinked #fullcircle #onewithtechnology

Critical Comparison

Are We Living Authentically?

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How should we define authenticity? As humans grow more attached to digital media, the distinction between the virtual world and authentic, “real life” grows convoluted. Alison Landsberg’s chapter, “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner”, demonstrates the tendency of viewers to adopt emotional movie scenes as authentic memories of their own. In “The iPhone Erfahrung: Siri, the Auditory Unconscious, and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Aura’”, Emily McArthur demonstrates how Siri, a voice-activated personal assistant, situates users in seemingly authentic human power dynamics. Both Landsberg and McArthur emphasize the “posthuman” nature of our modern world where memories and identities, manufactured by media, become injected into our bodies. Together, their texts question whether mediated memories and identities can be deemed authentic.  

Landsberg believes authentic human representation exists in mediated memory. Unlike Baudrillard who believes modern society is divorced from the “‘real’” and entrapped in “a world of simulation” (qtd. in Landsberg 178), Landsberg argues such a distinction never existed in the first place since “information cultures” and “narrative” have always mediated “real”, lived experience (178). She expands her belief by discussing how movie scenes can feel just as real as lived memories. Like Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, she emphasizes cinema’s ability to produce societal change and “political” collectivism (181). During a moving cinematic experience, audience members may identify with characters and their on-screen adversities; as a result, Landsberg notes films hold “potential to alter one’s actions in the future” (179-180). To Landsberg, movie scenes are not mere fragments of mass media, but “prosthetic memories” which audiences adopt as their own. Unlike natural memories–experienced individually and firsthand–prosthetic memories are acquired virtually, without truly experiencing them (180). Nevertheless, like all memories, prosthetic memories construct identity and how we empathize with others (176). 

As suggested in the title of her text, Landsberg explores the portrayal of prosthetic memories in popular dystopian films such as Total Recall and Blade Runner. In Total Recall, the protagonist, Quade, discovers his life has been manufactured by “the Agency” (Landsberg 181). As a result, he recollects a past he has not experienced; his life has been constructed of injected memories, raising the “question of his identity” (181). His privileging of these memories over his natural self is especially prominent when he is unable to recognize “his face on a portable video screen” (181-182); he associates his authentic self with his prosthetic memories, rather than his facial features, posing the question of whether Quade’s implanted memories are more authentic than his own human body (182). Blade Runner similarly investigates the difference between authentic and inauthentic memory. Rachel, the love interest to Deckard, the film’s protagonist, is an enslaved humanlike robot known as a “replicant”; her memories are manufactured by her employer, Mr. Tyrell, who ensures control over replicants by manipulating their pasts (Landsberg 177). When Rachel plays the piano for Deckard, she states she “‘remember[s] lessons’”; here, Deckard ignores her fabricated past (185). She plays “beautifully” regardless of whether her lessons were prosthetic or “‘real’”, posing the question of whether lived, self-produced memories are better than prosthetic ones (185). To Rachel, her memories of these lessons are real, authentic, and personal even though they are manufactured. Altogether, Landsberg interprets the film as a demonstration that memories, regardless if they are prosthetic or lived, construct meaningful, seemingly authentic identities. Like Total Recall, Blade Runner obscures our distinction between inauthentic, manufactured memories and real, lived experience. 

While Landsberg merges the worlds of prosthetic and authentic memory, McArthur blurs the distinction between machine and human by discussing Siri, a virtual voice-activated assistant. McArthur defines Siri as a “natural language processor” (NLP), a machine that communicates with users through “human language” (116). She notes that “language ability” is typically defined as the factor that “‘makes us human’”; however, digital programs like Siri who produce human speech subvert this notion (116). She notes that Siri produces a humanlike voice through invisible processes of “translation and synthesis” (117). She can be similarized to a being, rather than a set of machinic parts, since a user only hears Siri’s personalized speech that uses “colloquial language” and addresses the user by their name (117). While a traditional Google search produces innumerous results, Siri replicates authentic human communication by providing a singular response to its user’s inquiry (117). In addition to prosthetic memories, Siri’s computer-engineered, anthropomorphic state obscures the difference between inauthentic and authentic. 

Overall, Landsberg and McArthur demonstrate the ability of media to construct identity. Landsberg demonstrates how prosthetic memory defines “personhood and identity” by citing Herbert Blumer’s studies of young adult reactions to films (187, 179). In his studies, Blumer found several respondents practiced “‘imaginative identification’”–the unconscious projection of “‘oneself into the role of hero or heroine’” (qtd. in Landsberg 179). Landsberg illustrates “imaginative identification” as especially impactful; she emphasizes that one respondent who adopted the identity of The Sheik’s “‘heroine’” even felt the kisses of a fictional love interest (Blumer qtd. in 179). Conversely, McArthur demonstrates how NLPs like Siri produce “social hierarchies ” in addition to identity (116). She notes Siri imitates classist and gendered human dynamics by resembling a “‘personal assistant’” who answers to the wishes of her user (119). Additionally, Siri’s effeminate voice accentuates her “secretarial” tone; by acting as an assistant, her user adopts the identity of a master (119, 120). Furthermore, the user, regardless of their class, becomes a “bourgeois subject” by gaining an immediate “sense of power” over Siri (119).  In combination, Landsberg and McArthur demonstrate how media and technology form authentic human identities. 

Prosthetic memory and NLPs are also theorized to produce authentic bodily effects. For example, Landsberg mentions the “Payne Studies” which aimed to calculate the ability of film to physically affect “the bodies of its spectators” (180). Observations of spectators’ “electrical impulses”, “‘circulatory system[s]’”, “respiratory pulse and blood pressure” revealed the potential of film to cause “physiological symptoms” (180). This hypothesis aligns with “‘innervation’”, a Benjaminian view that “bodily experience” and “the publicity of the cinema” can generate collective social movements (Landsberg 181). While films potentially induce diverse biological responses, NLPs like Siri, transform the human body’s processing of sound. McArthur notes humans unknowingly  “tune out” noises, transferring them to their “unconscious”; she equates this instinct to seeing “‘without hearing’” (Simmel qtd. in 121). Siri, a “disembodied technological voice”, however, forces users to hear “‘without seeing’”; her lack of physical form forces users to rely on different senses (122). As a result, prosthetic memory and NLPs alike produce authentic, corporeal effects.

In our lectures and tutorials, we have often discussed media’s establishment of body standards, virtual identities in video games, and avatars on dating sites; this comparison of texts expands this discussion by showing a melding of virtual and “real” life through film and NLPs. The authentic and anthropomorphic qualities of new media demonstrate that the “posthuman” era is not a faraway prediction embedded in dystopian futures; rather, it is situated in our present. Modern reliance on media as a guide for identity formation is prominent in our adoption of cinematic prosthetic memory and our widespread use of humanlike NLPs. While Landsberg demonstrates films’ abilities to implant prosthetic memory and construct identity, McArthur demonstrates natural language processors’ abilities to construct identity by placing users in power dynamics. The impact of prosthetic memory and natural language processors  can also be perceived through their corporeal effects. Altogether, these powerful forms of media entangle the concepts of inauthentic and authentic. 

Works Cited

McArthur, Emily. “The iPhone Erfahrung Siri, the Auditory Unconscious, and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Aura’.” Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman, edited by Dennis M. Weiss, Amy D. Propen, and Colby Emmerson Reid, ch. 6, Bloomsbury Publishing, 14 Aug. 2014, pp. 113-127. 


Landsberg, Alison. “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner.” Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment, edited by Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, SAGE Publications, 1995, pp. 175-189.

Photo Credit

Yap, Jeremy. turned on projector. Unsplash, 9 Nov. 2016, https://unsplash.com/photos/turned-on-projector-J39X2xX_8CQ.

Written by Emily Shin

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Making in the Eco Chamber

“Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity.”

― Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco: A Library of the World is a documentary that delves into Italian literary critic and semiotician Umberto Eco’s life and his personal library, which houses over 30,000 volumes of novels and 1,500 rare and ancient books. Director Davide Ferrario discusses with Eco, conducts interviews with his family and friends, and retrieves archival footage of Eco to beautifully encapsulate Eco’s life through his love and passion for books and the exploration of the truth. The 80-minute film presents Eco’s library as a living archive that mediates the relationship between media and memory, providing insights into how media shapes thought, culture, and history. Expanding to the scope of this course, the film explores the importance of the distinction between material and digital media, semiotics, and the body. I will connect these concepts to Tim Ingold’s novel Making, specifically, with Ingold’s claim that media as living matter and his distinction between ‘objects’ versus ‘things’. I argue that Eco’s approach to media and memory through books parallels Ingold’s concept of making as a continuous process between the conscious and material world.

The film’s themes of media and material knowledge emerge most vividly through Eco’s private library, which serves as both a physical living archive and a conceptual framework for understanding his worldview. The library, which is a growing personal collection of Eco’s books, then becomes a symbol of a living system of knowledge, rather than a static collection of objects. The film strengthens this idea by presenting Eco’s notion of vegetal memory, which mediates memory and knowledge through paper and books. Eco claims, in his paper on vegetal memory, that libraries are ‘the most important way of keeping our collective wisdom’ (Eco, 1). For him, books and their mass presence through the space of a library become a physical thing that mediates memory, linking memory to material forms. This idea parallels Ingold’s argument that material form is flowing, not fixed. He claims that the material world and human thought are mediated through correspondences, where the flow of materials and the flow of consciousness are intertwined, where making becomes a process of mediation (Ingold, 21). For Eco, making comes in the form of curating books for his personal archive, where he engages thought and memory with the physicality of books. Ingold proposes that making is an embodied interaction that occurs before and during meaning is made (Ingold, 96). Eco mirrors Ingold’s claims as he physically turns the page of each book, engaging with it at every turn. Beyond completing the reading, he continues to engage with the material by keeping a collection of books. Here, the meaning of books changes before, during, and after the activity of reading the actual contents of the object. With embodied interaction with its material, as Eco refuses to put on gloves to preserve its material, rather letting it decay, breathe, and live in its environment, the books transform from a commodity to a physical vessel of memory and knowledge.

To further explore the library as a metaphor for collective knowledge, Eco’s fascination with semiotics exhibits many parallels with Ingold’s distinction between objects and things and their affordances. Eco connects semiotics, the study of signs as a means of meaning-making, back to vegetal memory, where every book is a sign whose contents reference other signs and histories. Through these signs and the curation of other signs through books, humans can form frameworks to understand the world. Because of this, Eco’s library transforms into a semiotic system that not only houses these vessels of signs and knowledge but also creates a network that connects books through categories and cross-referencing. Furthermore, Ingold’s interpretation of seeing things as things, rather than as objects, is extremely relevant in exploring how Eco engages with books through a semiotic lens.

Ingold quotes philosopher Martin Heidegger’s claim that objects are complete in themselves, where correspondence does not occur because it does not interact with the world and its surroundings (Ingold, 85). On the other hand, Ingold claims that things are with us as opposed to objects being against us. Things can be experienced in a way that corresponds with their surroundings, rather than merely witnessing or existing alongside an object. A thing is a dynamic gathering of material matter that engages with other things, such as people or the environment (Ingold, 85). Ingold concludes his claim by stating that things exist and persist because they leak, where materials interact with each other physically across the different surfaces they encounter. Through these types of leakages and interactions, things can be living and dynamic and possess a sort of bodily agency that can die, decay, or transform over time (Ingold, 95). With this distinction between ‘objects’ and ‘things,’ it is clear that Eco’s books are not static or to be read and stored once completed. Rather, his consciousness corresponds with the book’s materiality, and even goes beyond his personal interpretations of his texts when he connects different texts and shares his understanding with the public. As mentioned in the quote at the start of this post, Eco’s passion for books goes beyond viewing them as a mere object or commodity; rather, it affords him knowledge and understanding of the world around him. Through this ongoing dialogue between mind and material, Eco transforms reading into a living practise, one that blurs the boundaries between individual memory and the collective intelligence stored within his library.

Ultimately, Umberto Eco: A Library of the World reveals that knowledge is never static but is continually made and remade through our material and intellectual engagements with media. Through the lens that books are dynamic ‘things’ rather than ‘objects,’ the film presents Eco’s books as a living, constantly growing system of knowledge. A point in the film that struck me the most was the intimate moments of Eco physically interacting with his books. Sensory actions such as touching the covers or each page, smelling the books, or rearranging books in categories became systems and processes of thinking. This reminded me that reading is not just an intellectual activity, but also a tactile and relational practise. Reflecting on our course discussions, I found parallels with the Critical Terms chapter I read for my presentation, “Writing,” where theorist Andre Leroy-Gourhan emphasises graphism in writing. Specifically, how literacy is not only used as a means of communication but as a tool that links mind, body, and material. The film offers a powerful reminder that media are not passive containers of knowledge but active participants in the making of knowledge itself.

Works Cited

​​Eco, Umberto. (2022). Umberto Eco: A Library of the World [Film]. Directed by Davide Ferrario.

Eco, Umberto. “Vegetal and Mineral Memory: The Future of Books.” Academia.Edu, 21 June 2015, www.academia.edu/13152692/Vegetal_and_Mineral_Memory_The_Future_of_Books_by_Umberto_Eco. 

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013.

Cover image from The Belcourt Theatre

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The Game Controller: Mediating Between Virtual and Physical Worlds

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Introduction

What do the buttons on a game console controller represent for you? Each button most likely has different functions which vary among each game’s unique game mechanics. Take for example, the “B” button. In Splatoon, pressing it results in your in-game avatar to jump, in Hades, it makes you dash forward, whereas in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, holding it down makes your avatar run. Our real-life act of pressing a button translates into another action occurring in-game, as depicted on the screen. One could even say that the buttons having diverse effects in each game’s unique mechanics, representing their own specific set of rules, relies on their own system of signs.  

Avatar in Splatoon 3 displaying “jump” mechanic – Footage by Christine Choi
Character, Zagreus, in Hades displaying “dash” mechanic – Footage by Christine Choi
Avatar in Animal Crossing: New Horizons displaying “run” mechanic – Footage by Christine Choi

This fascination surrounding such concepts is precisely why I chose a game controller as my evocative object. Although there are so many different variations of a game controller, I am going to use the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller as an example as it is the controller I was mediated by the most and is also one of the more “standard” modern designs when it comes to game controllers (the existence of a joystick, four buttons with letters/symbols, L and R buttons, etc.). By analyzing the game controller, I will highlight the ways that it mediates between us, the player, and the virtual world that the game exists in. 

The Controller and the Player

As mentioned before, the game controller has the unique ability to mediate between us and the virtual world displayed within the hardware (whether that is the console or the PC). When it comes to “playing” a game via a controller, there is a unique set of feedback that is inputted and outputted mediating between our physical corporeal bodies and the incorporeal in-game virtual bodies. 

You would first take in the world through senses, like sight and hearing. Certain in-game index, symbols, and icons may evoke feelings of fear, especially if it had informed the player of it causing harm to the avatar in the past. Others may evoke curiosity, enticing the player to explore more of the game and the “rules” of this digital world. Once you have cognitively processed that, your instincts—shaped by in-game and real-world experiences—would inform you to react. You would react by pressing buttons or rolling the joystick to the direction you want it to. We know, or at the very least expect, that the controller has received input when we receive the tactile feedback of the button being pushed down then springing back as we release it from pressing down on it. Then you would see the fruition of your act of button-pressing/joystick pushing by seeing the pixels on-screen change to indicate movement/change within this virtual world. 

Feedback of input and output between virtual and physical worlds – Diagram drawn by Christine Choi

The feelings evoked from the virtual information would translate in the grip of our controller; dodging enemies evoking another emotion of relief and safety, the achievement leading to satiate more of our curiosity, all driving our progression of the game. Thus, the controller is the mediating object for the player’s input and the software (which would be the game). Without the game, there is nothing for it to control and without the player input, there is nothing being controlled. 

Exerting Control over in-game “bodies”

Much of what is being said about the “control” over avatars/characters is correlated to what is said about the “body” as a medium in Critical Terms for Media Studies. After all, the controller could be seen as an extension of our own body, which extends into what is being “embodied” in-game. Wegenstein, too, utilizes psychoanalytic theories of how video games allow us to play the role of the “other”, a virtual embodiment that differs from the embodiment of ourselves. She quotes Slavoj Zizek on “a figure capable of taking on, or projecting itself into, many simultaneous roles” (28). The concept of roles that we project onto is correspondent with how the controller that mediates and perpetuates this “ego” that we project onto, making the body of the playable character another medium. 

Thus far, I have only discussed characters and avatars that have an anthropomorphic body, which is easy to visualize as we easily project our human bodies onto these characters. But what about games with no “avatar” or humanistic representation of our own bodies? I would argue that there is still a “body” or “vessel” in which we, in our physical and corporeal forms, exert control over digitally. Take Tetris for example, the falling blocks would be the body that we project ourselves onto. As the blocks fall, we move with it left or right via the joystick or D-pad. 

Game Controller as a “Black Box”

Even the most avid gamers most likely do not know the internal computational and mechanical workings of what occurs in between the space and time in which we press the button and watch the game do its magic. The game controller generally works under the “black box” heuristics (a cybernetics theory coined by Norbert Wiener), in which the processes of the input from our button to the output in the game is shrouded in mystery for the average user (Wiener, page xi). However, I would argue that this knowledge we lack of our game controller’s internal workings is precisely the tool we use to immerse ourselves in the virtual space of a video game. What we do know as gamers is that eventually, its mechanics is burned into the memory of our bodies through “muscle memory” as the controls become second nature to us, thus “mediating” our physical bodies in the real world and the incorporeal bodies that exist in the virtual space of a video game.

Citations

Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Body.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, 2010, pp. 19–34.

Wiener, Norbert, et al. Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press, 2019.

Images and footage were all taken by Christine Choi

Other

Blueberries, Body, and More

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I have always been attracted to fruit – as a girl with a sweet tooth, I resonate with their endearing size, flavour profiles, and delicate ties to femininity. During reflection on which one in particular I wanted to write about, I cycled through my favourites; mangoes, apples, grapes … they were all meaningful to me, but what came to the forefront of my mind and stayed there wasn’t remarkable at all. 

I don’t often have blueberries. It’s only when the circumstances perfectly align that they end up in my fridge and subsequently in my mouth – if there’s a sale I can’t ignore, a recipe I’m determined to follow, or a family member who made them appear in front of me. I specifically recall a recent memory where I was sitting at the kitchen table of my childhood home eating blueberries alone. I picked my way through the small blue fruits in the contrasting red bowl, rifling through to find the biggest, firmest, and most promising candidates. I remember seeing it as a gamble of flavours, a psychology experiment on associations between size and taste. If I felt particularly reckless, I would scoop up a handful and feel all the different flavours combine in my mouth. I was so inspired, in fact, that I took it upon myself to write my thoughts down in the form of a Notes app poem. Working a 9-5 internship made me feel uncreative and nostalgic of my more creative middle school times, so this is the product of such feelings:

if i was blueberry

i wonder if i’d still be small

i wonder if people would avoid me in the crowd, opting to pick my bigger counterpart

i wonder if finally, at the end, they would take the risk and spear through my soft skin

or if they would throw me away

i wonder if when they break through my flesh with their teeth

they would be pleasantly surprised by my sweetness

or if they would cringe from the tartness, and live the rest of their life avoiding other small blueberries

if i was a blueberry i wonder if you would still choose me first

Although this piece is unsophisticated and unnecessarily romantic, I learned that blueberries truly do evoke much from me. Blueberries afford me imperfection. Among a world of perfectly GMO’d fruits and perfectly edited lives, blueberries connect me to nature in a way that Susannah’s Apples did for her. They provide me with variety and natural bursts of joy that still manage to reach my overloaded dopamine receptors. They are a constant in my life, regardless of if I realize it or not. They top my yogurt, colour my smoothies, and are a delightful contrast in desserts. They are not my favourite, and they are not always the tastiest. Even among the cartons labeled Jumbo XL Sweet Blueberries, at least a few are bound to disappoint. Nonetheless, their flaws are exactly what makes them blueberries, and without the ones left squished at the bottom of the carton and the risk that comes with each bite, there is no experience being evoked – it all becomes quite boring.

The blueberry mediates my view on life and how life views me. In my tumultuous age within our current world, I find myself, more often than not, unconfident. Unsure about my place in my life, the workplace, and the world. In these times, it brings me comfort to consider the similarities between me and a little blue fruit. The blueberry also has a body, and moves through its life based on, and through, its body. Unfortunately, it also gets judged on its appearance, and predetermined stereotypes determine its fate. Despite all this, it thrives! And it does this without all the unique capabilities that we have as humans. The blueberry is its own medium and the final product. It does not have the privilege of embodiment, the dynamic living experience of being a blueberry – it simply is. Wegenstein notes in her chapter on Body that online personas, cosmetic surgery, fashion and architecture as mediums demonstrate that “current trends of thinking” about the body aim to nullify the rise of disembodiment in modern culture. Through the way we edit and adjust our own body and what it produces, we are able to control our experiences and design our life. This is how we end up with human experiences, rather than blueberry experiences. 

In this sense, blueberries afford me gratitude – appreciation of my uniquely human features, the dexterity of my fingers to create art, the earlobes that I intentionally pierced to make space for dangly jewelry, the still-developing brain that I fill with knowledge and skills. Wegenstein writes that our bodies, now mediated through technology, fashion, and self-representation, are not fixed but dynamic sites of creation – tools through which we experience, express, and even redesign life. Yet, as Mandel and Cézanne suggest, there is beauty in remaining tethered to the soil, in recognizing that even the most mediated body is still material. In the same way that Susannah’s apples ground her in a sensual awareness of being “part fruit, part earth,” my blueberries remind me that embodiment is a continuous act of negotiation between nature, self, and medium. The blueberry, then, becomes my counterpoint to digital disembodiment: a reminder of imperfection, decay, and the sweetness or tartness that cannot be filtered or replicated. Now when I encounter one, I feel my own presence with the world – how I consume it, and how it, in turn, shapes me. In this quiet exchange between fruit and flesh, I find an embodied media experience: a small affirmation that I am still here, still part of the earth, still alive.

Turkle, Sherry. “WHAT MAKES AN OBJECT EVOCATIVE? .” pp. 307–326.

Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Body.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, pp. 19–34.

Other

Analyzing My Perspective

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Introduction

Everyday, when I wake up, the world is a little blurred. Beside my head, on my windowsill, are the frames of plastic that fix that. 

I have had glasses since I was nine years old and since then they have been the windows through which I have quite literally watched my entire life. Without my glasses, I would not have the same memories that I do today, namely because lots of the details would be missing. Nothing is more subjective than a person’s perspective, and in that, their perception of the world. By watching the world through my glasses, my perception has been permanently altered by them. It would otherwise be lacking image and depth as I literally would not be able to see the bigger picture. Unless I decide to wear contacts, or get surgery to fix my eyesight, my entire world will always be mediated through these pieces of plastic and because of that, they are the root from which all of my memories, perceptions, and opinions grow.

By clarifying the world around men, mechanically fixing the way that my eyes focus the light in the world they watch, my glasses have mediated my experience and memory since I got them.

Affordances

The main affordance of my glasses is pretty clear: they help me see. Without them, and assuming there was no alternative to fixing my vision, my everyday life would be significantly impaired. I would not be able to see properly beyond a foot from my nose, which would make things including–but not limited to–reading signs and whiteboards, driving, and recognizing faces pretty difficult. Though they are crucial to my easy access to the world around me, the function of my glasses reaches beyond what they do to the light as it enters my eye.

Each pair of glasses that I have means something different to me. I have a purple and green glow-in-the-dark pair from when I was a kid, pairs that were too small, pairs that gave me a headache and, most importantly, pairs that I love and feel myself in. In addition to helping me see, my glasses are a mode of self-expression. Just because they are functionally necessary to my everyday life, does not mean I can not use them to a further effect and have fun with them. I also deliberately avoid wearing contacts. Frankly, I hate them. Though I do not mind sticking a piece of plastic in my eye, they are far too finicky for my taste, and when I do wear them, they always really dry out my eyes. Additionally, because I have had my glasses for so long, I have gotten used to them, and feel more myself when I wear them than when I go without.

I rarely change my everyday glasses. All of these frames are distinctly associated to different periods of my life, and by that effect, are irrevocably linked to the memories I have within those periods. By mediating my world so thoroughly, my glasses can be studied within the context of many of the critical terms we discussed in class, most notably, Body and Senses.

Body

Growing up with glasses, they have become incorporated into my own sense of identity. This is interesting to consider in the context of McLuhan’s theory of media as “extensions of man” and it should be understood as “continuous with the human nervous system”(Wegenstein 29). My glasses are an extension of my eyes by necessity, altering the way my eyes receive light, and focusing the world around me. By affecting my vision so concretely, there is very little distinction between the “inside and outside” of the media and myself, greatly conflating my perspective with the perspective of the glasses. Theoretically, the glasses still mediate when they are not on my face, they still function off my face, there just is not anyone to perceive the perspective they create. 

McLuhan defines a dual function of media, one that is both an extension and amputation of the body (Wegenstein 29). They are an extension of my eyes and mediate my world through their lenses, yet they are also physically separate from my face, focusing the light in the world whether or not they are on my face. 

Senses

Obviously, my glasses pretty heavily impact my own sense of sight, however, what is more significant is how reliant I am on my glasses.

The concept of Plato’s cave is interesting to consider in relation to my reliance on my glasses. The basis for Plato’s cave is the division between “knowing and mere existence” in that the prisoners–bound to simply watching the world–only exist, while philosophers–who experience the full dimensions of the world and understand its mediation of reality–are in the know (Jones 89). This distinction between watching and knowing is applicable to my perception of the world with and without my glasses. Without them, my ability to see and move through the physical world is inherently altered, but I am still able to see. However, the lack of depth and detail that impedes my ability to see the bigger picture could be compared to the simple existence of the prisoners in the cave who simply watch without knowing.

By correcting my vision, my glasses afford me an effective sense of sight, allowing me the context and depth of details, and affording me the knowledge associated. The construct of the cave completely dictates the prisoners’ experiences of reality, forming “a system of representation and deception with which the blindered sense of sight colludes”(Jones 89). Similarly, my glasses completely mediate my perception of the world. Though the reliance between me and my glasses is far less absolute than that of the prisoners and the cave featured in Plato’s cave analogy, and most of the things I do in my everyday life are possible without sight, there is a similar reliance on media to fully experience the world and the full extent of knowledge it offers.

Exploring these parallels further, the concept of true vision–“turning away from spectacle… closing one’s eyes to the visible world—or its mediated image—to question what one sees”–is also interesting to consider. Associated with this notion, and Plato’s analogy, are two tropes of blindness:“the ignorant blindness of the prisoners and the volitional blindness of the philosopher”(Jones 89). These ideas of different blindness parallel the function of glasses. I can consciously take off my glasses, turning away from the spectacle and engaging in a form of volitional blindness, thus un-mediating the world and returning it to the state that my own eyes and brain have decided is right for me (as inconvenient as that may be). But it also renders me ignorant to the details of my physical surroundings.

Conclusion

It is intriguing to study my glasses as they have become such a routine and unremarkable part of my life. By looking at them through the lens of the theories discussed in these chapters, I found a new appreciation for my frames. By looking at the functional and everyday objects in our lives in these ways, we can appreciate how the more menial objects mediate us and how we perceive the world. 

(Note: Obviously there are ways to navigate the world without being able to see, I wrote this post in the context of the knowledge I have as someone whose vision is correctable with prescription lenses.)

Sources

Jones, Caroline. “Senses”, Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W.J.T Mitchell and Mark, B.N. Hansen, The University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 88-100. 

Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Body”, Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W.J.T Mitchell and Mark, B.N. Hansen, The University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 19-34. 

Blog post written by Molly Kingsley

Image by Molly Kingsley

Critical Concept Explication

Negotiating the Body: Between Expression and Control

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Our group presented our analysis and explication through a podcast: https://on.soundcloud.com/mqPJiyJwTVvtSuQgM4

Our perceptions of the human body evolve across time periods and diversify across cultures. As technology advances, artificial intelligence and the ability to have multiple online personas complexify our view of the body as a mode for self-expression. Some even theorize the body will be replaced by “computational or other machinic embodiment”; this could appear as “brain layers” being transferred to “hard drives” in order to streamline knowledge exchange (Wegenstein 27). In these times of “disembodiment”, we must critically examine the importance of the tangible human body as a mode of communication (27). At first, our group was confused by the concept of being detached from the body; this prediction by Wegenstein and several theorists felt dystopian and unrealistic. However, we later realized this is exactly what Wegenstein aims to convey; she hopes to demonstrate the “frightening”, “posthuman’”, and “antihumanist” nature of this prediction (27). 

Connections with other Critical Terms

After watching other groups’ presentations, I found our chapter connected to the presentation on Chapter 12: New Media. The presenters noted that all media is in a sense “new”, as media of all ages has always had moments of “newness”. Although our chapter heavily focuses on defining the body as a medium, I believe the body can also constitute “new media”, as it is always being reinvented due to cultural precedents. Here, Hansen’s emphasis on affect and bodily experience of computation in “New Media”  underwrites Wegenstein’s claim that the body is not post-media but in media. Because of the heavily politicized nature in which bodies have existed through centuries, our chapter also connects to the “Law” chapter which emphasizes how legal codes inscribe and regulate bodies i.e determining which bodies are visible, legitimate, or deviant. Hence, we see the connection that the media produces bodies as aw policies. A striking example of this is cosmetic surgery–a regulated practice (with you can cut what is allowed and malpractice frameworks). Here we see the interplay of law and bodies as mediums of production. 

Podcast Brief

Through this podcast, we explore the discussion of ‘The Body’ chapter through summary, analysis, and drawing connection to our experiences and other media. We seek to answer the following questions: 

  1. If the body is always already mediated, is there such a thing as an “authentic” body at all?
  2. How does the body influence culture and how does culture influence the body?
  3. If the body is our first medium, what is one way you consciously use your body to communicate or express identity?

Our exploration of Wegenstein’s Body highlights how embodiment is never static but continually shaped by technology, culture, and law. Although it initially felt dystopian to explore the idea of disembodiment and machinic embodiment, we now see how it becomes predictive once we recognize it as a provocation to think critically about what makes the body meaningful. By situating the body alongside “new media” and legal frameworks, we see it not only as a vessel of self expression but also as a contested site of regulation, reinvention, and power. 

Podcast link: https://on.soundcloud.com/mqPJiyJwTVvtSuQgM4

Contributors: Stuti Sharma, Dea Yu, Emily Shin, Kimchi Tran

Works Cited

Wegenstein, Bernadette. “Body.” Critical Terms for Media Studies, edited by W.J.T. Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen, U of Chicago P, 2010, pp. 19-34.

StrawberryJello. “A Cold but Warm Winter ~Snow World~.”, SoundCloud, no. 8, 2016, https://soundcloud.com/strawberryjello/008-snow-world-yume-nikki-ost.