I've just been catching up on a week's worth of digest, so apologies for
my late contribution to this debate, but I was interested to read the
various interventions around the question of poor-quality images as
guarantor of authenticity. I wonder if we could extend this question to
deal with things other than the news media. It has been suggested that
part of the appeal of reality TV shows like Big Brother is the use of
poor quality (eg infra-red) images which give the impression of watching
something like close-circuit TV and thereby reinforcing our feeling of
power over the incarcerated subjects. The effect is naturally increased
for people watching over the internet.
Similarly when I saw the Japanese horror film Ring, it struck me that
part of the reason why the fateful video cassette is scary is because
the image is so unclear. I haven't seen the American remake - do they
do anything interesting with this?
Douglas Morrey
Lecturer in French
School of Modern Languages
University of Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
Tel: +44 (0)191 2225054
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