Chloe Anna Milligan
The Viral Image
mediaposters formats. may If this worktransmedia as prototypes tropeifseems we contest famil- Jeniar, itkins’s should estimation be; sinceofthe“older turn of notions” the twenty-first and entertain century, the film’s the Internet, covert advertisements as an extensionasofanthese earlysetkind of tings,consumer has become participation. the playground The posters for similarly mean to inhypnospiredtize projects viewers promoting into “becoming films through Caligari”; a blurring therefore, of theviewers real and “passively” mediated. accept This article their argues participation that thein the impact transmedia of viral media mise-en-scène marketingfrom hinges print upon image a “facto film. tualization” of fiction, which directly utilizes the The film is clearly a product of its time, released technologies of its media culture to extend a film’s into a culture reeling from shell shock and fascinated visual thematic effect through a film’s promotion. By by hypnosis. The First World War had just ended in engaging first with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)— Germany’s humiliation, and Caligari premiered less among the most iconic films noted for its impeccathan two years later. Its plot draws much of its horble mise-en-scène—and its marketing, and then the ror from the then-cultural vogue of pseudo-scientific “found footage” horror film The Blair exhibits of hypnosis. In Shell Shock Cinema, Anton Witch Project (1999), indie thriller Kaes insists that these facets are inextricably linked, Sound of My Voice (2011), the science for hypnosis was a popular method used to treat fictional epic District 9 (2009), and sushell shock victims. Caligari works at the nexus of perhero blockbuster The Dark Knight both, and speaks to its viewing audience on dual (2008),2 this article connects two separate, yet similar, cultural histories that reveal how mise-en-scène can be transmediated. Therefore, when analyzing marketing campaigns alongside their films, we see that transmedia mise-en-scène starts here in the fictional real.
Michael Cowan “the mobileKaes spectator” (473). fronts. Mostcalls compellingly, suggests, “Stage Mise-en-scène mobile now, not just in thehypnosis streets, exshows andisillustrated lectures featuring but across information of the Web, isted inthe a twilight zone highways between scholarly-scientific spreading virally, according to media expert(59). Henry pursuit and downright charlatanism” As the Jenkins. diffusion reinsertsas“the photographic imfilmIts depicts Dr. Caligari both a sideshow charlatan age” and (14) back into thepsychiatrist, conditions ofitstime space the a respected plotand inhabits fromblurred which André Bazinof claimed filmfact, was as free. Yet acdimensions fake and visually this time andthrough space isitsboth temporally and spatially cented German Expressionist mise-enreal and fictionally unreal,real making the viral scène. The fictional settingit within thenofilm is placemarked made ofbyplace: the fictional real. The impossible architecture (e.g.,fictional twisted, anreal turns depth of field into a literal condi- and gled, Bazin’s and bizarrely-proportioned buildings tion props) near and far. Transmedia mise-en-scène in the or that favours symbolism over functionality fictional real then begins the viral regisverisimilitude, whichwith indicates thatimage, its story of fake within the distinct moviegoer and fact istering simultaneously fromoutside reality yet theofmovie. reminiscent it.
Mise-en-scène is widely regarded as “cinema’s grand undefined term” (Henderson 6), so a working definition for this article’s argument is in order. Mise-en-scène’s literal French meaning “placing on stage” can be read as “telling a story,” in order to refer to transmedia storytelling as transmedia miseen-scène. But how that story gets told filmically matters both within and outside the film; this article regards mise-en-scène as the establishing (and lasting) image of a film’s diegetic world. Film storytelling in network culture, nuanced in this article from Brian Henderson’s take” of mise-en-scène, Fig. 1:“long German Worldtheory War I propaganda poster, reading: “Your Fatherland in Danger, Register!” must establish its long istake outside the theater in short time to capture the attention of what scholar
media consumer interact in unpredictable ways” (2). Convergence, according to Jenkins, necessitates what he calls a participatory culture, which he believes “contrasts with older notions of passive media spectatorship” (3). Describing how participatory culture narratively engages media, he explains that “transmedia storytelling refers to a new aesthetic that has emerged in response to media convergence—one that places new demands on consumers and depends on the active participation of knowledge communities” (20-21), as stories can begin in their own mar2: Promotional poster for Thehe Cabinet Dr. CaketingFig. and spread virally. While clearlyof has interligari subverting wartime propaganda’s conscriptive activelanguage, media in mind for definitions, Caligari’s demanding “Duhis Musst Caligari Werden!”
Mise-en-scène Convergence The blurring of the real and fictional already beCabinet is mobilegan that visualThe theme when Caligarimarposters Cabinet of Dr.the Caligari’s now, not just in keting strategy demonstrated that culture was already in its the streets, but convergence early form in Weimar Germany. Henry Jenkins’s Convergence Culture across the its titular model as a place information defines “where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate mehighways of dia intersect, where the power of the the Web. media producer and the power of the
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Vol. 1, No. 1 | Winter 2016
(“You must become Caligari!”).
MISE-EN-SCÈNE
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