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This talk will look at recent shifts in style and mood in moving-image media. By "post-continuity," I refer to recent trends in Hollywood cinema in which the traditional anchoring by means of continuity editing has become less important than a kind of immanent affective organization of the narrative in terms of moments of transition and shock. One can see this in a number of post-2000 action blockbusters by directors such as the late Tony Scott, but also in various unusual styles of low-budget independent filmmaking. By "post-irony," I refer more to a change in tone and mood than in one of stylistics: the tendency, found in certain recent art pictures and low-budget exploitation pictures alike, to move beyond the "postmodern" cynicism and irony regarding the proliferation of simulacra in the late 20th century, to a new kind of ontological reckoning with such developments.

 

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Dr. Shaviro is the DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University, where he teaches courses on literature, film, and contemporary cultural theory. His books include: Post-Cinematic Affect (2010), Connected, Or, What It Means to Live in the Network Society (2003), DoomPatrols: A Theoretical Fiction About Postmodernism (1997), and The Cinematic Body (1993).