Nice to see that gore-sploitation films appeared right at the start. After all, there were plenty of completely nude women in earliest films, though those were pretty tame—but afaik porn followed in a couple decades or so, when film stopped costing more than a live tour.
By the way, regarding ‘L’arrivée...’, Wikipedia says that Lumieres attempted 3D films even before getting properly started with flat ones. So, considering that accounts from that time were of quite meh quality, it's possible that the running-out occurred at a 3D showing, making the ‘illusion’ story more plausible.
Lastly, since J.G. Ballard is mentioned, I'll say that both ‘Crash’ and ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ are very cool. Aside from obvious connotations to real people's habits, just the atmosphere of the books is engrossing in the weirdest way. They tickle the brain in a manner that's only similar to what I experienced in childhood, when the world was big and anything could be in it—only, these books are for adults. I don't think they quite make surrealism like that anymore. Kobo Abe and animator Piotr Kamler are contemporaries that are somewhat similar in effect; Cronenberg's ‘Videodrome’ is likewise good (however his ‘Crash’ doesn't really have the feel). Of later stuff, Bret Easton Ellis is proficient in such immersion, and funny enough has a pair ‘American Psycho’-‘Glamorama’ that are close in the themes to each other but are related in execution like the two books of Ballard's, and likewise the film is its own thing by necessity.
Of very current authors, I know only Vladimir Sorokin who can pull off such feats—but his thing is that he can do what he wants with Russian language, and as a result is next to untranslatable. Apparently there's a dude who took on the challenge with English as the target, and several books at once are going to be published very soon (this year, they said)—I'm looking forward to diving in that the first chance I get, but my expectations are high and the outlook cautious.
> As in other instances of the very earliest films, the film presents the audience with the images of a shocking experience, without further narrative exposition.
So indeed the genre seems to have proliferated right away.
P.S. Since I've gotten this far in plugging authors, I'll add that Sorokin lives in Berlin and writes some of his books in German, so it's possible that German translations of his Russian stuff are written by himself. The best introduction to Sorokin is ‘Marina's Thirtieth Love’, which is pretty much a shortish story. It would be quite curious to hear Westerners' impression of his style.
The Great Train Robbery (1903) ends with one of the bandits pointing a pistol at the camera and shooting. Apparently, this also disturbed audiences so deeply that they got up and ran out of the movie theater. This is more of an urban legend than anything, as mentioned in the article, but it goes to show the emotional power of new technology.
It reminds you of Clarke's third law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I still remember the ominous feeling of receiving an unsolicited, location-based mobile notification from Google requesting a review immediately after leaving a local restaurant. Digital surveillance works by some unseen "magic" to most users, which is more dread than horror, like a hacker posting your IP and location out of nowhere just to freak you out.
>I still remember the ominous feeling of receiving an unsolicited, location-based mobile notification from Google requesting a review immediately after leaving a local restaurant. Digital surveillance works by some unseen "magic" to most users, which is more dread than horror, like a hacker posting your IP and location out of nowhere just to freak you out.
Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky depicts a human interstellar civilization thousands of years in the future, in which superluminal travel is impossible (for the humans), so travelers use hibernation to pass the decades while their ships travel between star systems. Merchants often revisit systems after a century or two, so see great changes in each visit.
The merchants repeatedly find that once smart dust (tiny swarms of nanomachines) are developed, governments inevitably use them for ubiquitous surveillance, which inevitably causes societal collapse. <https://blog.regehr.org/archives/255>
Clarks third law or whatever just reminds me of how “progress” is a religion in the liberal west. It’s not an observation but a declaration of some silly standards which are nonsensical to any mind not indoctrinated to the delusions of elite western liberalism. On top of that, it’s also outright pompous.
I suppose if you read the inverse of the law, there's a tenuous thread connected to the notion that progress is a necessary step to disabusing our illusions of nature and how the world works. The risk is both assuming you know more than you do because you "believe in science", as well as devaluing things in the natural world because they do not fit into whatever notion of advancement is in vogue.
We often see valuable discoveries come from some area that was previously overlooked. There's not enough there to demand any sort of cute phrase but just enough to discourage the notion that a society with some advancements over another has nothing to learn from the other either.
I assumed it had something to do with the mother either telling him to be careful or he'd get run over by one of those "god-awful automobiles" and that she'll be pleased that she was right, or maybe slightly less likely that his mother hated him and will be happy that he's dead.
By the way, regarding ‘L’arrivée...’, Wikipedia says that Lumieres attempted 3D films even before getting properly started with flat ones. So, considering that accounts from that time were of quite meh quality, it's possible that the running-out occurred at a 3D showing, making the ‘illusion’ story more plausible.
Lastly, since J.G. Ballard is mentioned, I'll say that both ‘Crash’ and ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ are very cool. Aside from obvious connotations to real people's habits, just the atmosphere of the books is engrossing in the weirdest way. They tickle the brain in a manner that's only similar to what I experienced in childhood, when the world was big and anything could be in it—only, these books are for adults. I don't think they quite make surrealism like that anymore. Kobo Abe and animator Piotr Kamler are contemporaries that are somewhat similar in effect; Cronenberg's ‘Videodrome’ is likewise good (however his ‘Crash’ doesn't really have the feel). Of later stuff, Bret Easton Ellis is proficient in such immersion, and funny enough has a pair ‘American Psycho’-‘Glamorama’ that are close in the themes to each other but are related in execution like the two books of Ballard's, and likewise the film is its own thing by necessity.
Of very current authors, I know only Vladimir Sorokin who can pull off such feats—but his thing is that he can do what he wants with Russian language, and as a result is next to untranslatable. Apparently there's a dude who took on the challenge with English as the target, and several books at once are going to be published very soon (this year, they said)—I'm looking forward to diving in that the first chance I get, but my expectations are high and the outlook cautious.