#FoundFootageFridays (But on Monday) – You’re Not Alone: Fake Newscast, Period Verisimilitude, and the Lurking Ironies of Chris LaMartina’s The WNUF Halloween Special (2013)

Full text available at Academia.edu or via Google Drive.

This article examines the 2013 found footage horror film, WNUF Halloween Special, and its use of verisimilitude to enhance the viewer’s engagement and immersion in the narrative. The film is presented as a VHS recording of a local news broadcast from 1987, documenting a live investigation of a haunted house in River Hill Township. The narrative structure of the film is complex and meticulous, incorporating various elements of found footage and fake newscasts to create a realistic and believable environment. The article explores how the film uses verisimilitude to blur the lines between reality and fiction, and how this approach heightens the viewer’s sense of fear and unease. The use of real-time broadcasting techniques, such as commercials and weather updates, adds to the immersive quality of the film. The article also examines the role of ambiguity in the film, particularly in regards to the fate of one of the main characters, Veronica. The article argues that WNUF stands as a unique example of found footage horror that successfully maintains verisimilitude throughout its narrative. The film’s use of clear narrative circumstances and competent camerawork helps to challenge the boundaries between reality and fiction, presenting the horror movie not as a mere artifact, but as a fragment of our real world. The article suggests that WNUF’s success in maintaining verisimilitude could set a precedent for future found footage films.

Deleted Scenes: Strange Visitor – Not-necessarily-correlated notes on the psychology of the narrative subject

The following is material cut from an early draft of Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero. The full text is accessible on Academia.edu at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitorBook, or via Google Drive at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitor.

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If we are to deconstruct a narrative subject—to display our own distinctiveness and authority as linguistic subjects, as the definitive and enduring producers of our fictions as fictions–one benchmark would be to demystify a great and persistent question about this mighty and beloved hero.  One that is, perhaps, itself, an important part of his personality in its very enigma.  The model of the trace can be said to ‘proximitize’ everything both within and outside of an identity, even as it allows for mediation of that identity.  Thus, a character like Superman evolves even in how he relates to himself: “John Byrne lessened the distance between Superman and Clark Kent by removing the latter’s mild manner.”  If this is true, how has it come to affect Superman’s ‘otherness’ as materially significant and not?  Is Clark Kent a Kansas farmboy (a fellow subject of human language), or is he always still the alien–capable of human language, perhaps, but unchanged in his origins and nature of foreignness, be it on Krypton or in comic books—and therefore irreducibly inconsiderable as we would consider ourselves?

Every step of every process stated or implied here is shot through with the potential to be described, considered, textualized, narrativized.  In fact, the presentation of a subject within a narrative–the act of telling a story about any subject, including about ourselves and even to ourselves—represents a human discursive norm; we are compelled to consider the subject as the effect of contextual causes, to the point that we become distracted if those origins are left unexplained.  We perceive of such missing details as missing details, as a hole in the discursive constitution of the subject that must be (read: that we desire to have) filled in order for that subject to be properly ‘fleshed out’, to be regarded as more ‘complete’.  More human.

So, comic books as a medium become important in how they allow for the unique temporalization of the subject in and across narratives.  As linguistic subjects perceiving narrative subjects as narrative, we are not bound to the temporal laws of the context we are examining; be it in the form of a print or visual text, oral storytelling, or just about any other media, we, the readers, are often allowed the opportunity to move around, back and forth, within the narrative and even beyond it, to focus on details and compare things from a vantage point that the subjects of the narrative themselves, be they fictional or historical, cannot possibly entirely share with us.  Even for a highly-perceptive subject like Superman^[1], whose entire world is created around him, he must rely on his memory of certain narrative details while we, the reader, have the opportunity to flip back a few pages and see things (occasionally) more definitively^[2]. 

Meanwhile, textuality itself, in its own relationship with meaningful absences, can serve the desire of the subject to be recognized as a subject, even beyond or without a Freudian need for death^[3]: the validation of the subject’s social mediation–the success of the process of becoming, of meaning in a Lacanian sense.  The unfolding of the subject’s story, of developing character. 

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Yet, though death touches Superman’s life, it only really seems to apply to he himself in a more tarot-like way: not as discontinuation, but only as discontinuity. 

Returning to Leo Dorfman’s the Imaginary Story of Superman Red and Blue (1963), we see a version of the character who is content to do anything but live a peaceful, anonymous life with Lois on Earth.  After inventing and unleashing an ‘anti-evil ray’ that eliminates crime–and, thus, the need for Superman as a defender–the Red twin departs with Lois to live as a private citizen on New Krypton while the Blue twin, who marries Lana Lang, starts life as the Earth’s foremost scientist.  In each case, however, the identity of Clark Kent is abandoned, to the point that, in a triple wedding ceremony with Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane (Lois’ sister), Lois and Lana marry the two Supermen as Supermen.  It could be said that one chose to become normal but not remain on Earth, while the other chose to remain on Earth but largely eliminate his normalcy–the privacy that the Clark Kent personality has once provided.[4] 

Though Moore might give us non-canonical Superman, there is nothing there that is not Superman.  Contrasting Superman’s trace with the demands of Moore’s climax and the concomitant outcome of that all-but unwinnable situation with Mr. Mxyzptlk, the author supports Bacchilega’s valuation of repetition in the examination of what is being repeated–Superman as Superman.  We may discursively instantiate some broad, flat, vague outline of Superman’s identity as simple, but Moore and Bacchilega’s seemingly-iconoclastic perspective is not in any way foreign to the historical manifestations of the character.

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^[1] He does have x-ray vision, super-hearing, and an evolved Kryptonian brain, after all.

^[2]  Even, as is often the case with comics, to notice what was formally, strategically omitted, therefore understanding the structuredness, the directedness of environment that a character native to that narrative is written to lack.  For a superlative example of this phenomenon within Alan Moore’s own body of work, see Watchmen (1986-7); there, the otherwise-omniscient Dr. Manhattan notes, on several occasions, a gap in that knowledge as regards the climax of the story, contextually explained as the result of a large-scale atomic blast.

[3] In Ten Lessons in Theory, Calvin Thomas provides some insight into Freud’s explanation of the death—and commensurate ascension in authority—of the “primal father”.

[4] Alternatively, in “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow…?”, Alan Moore has Superman renounce his position as Superman more thoroughly than the ‘Red/Blue’ story requires–for neither of Dorfman’s variants are made to permanently sacrifice their powers. 

Yet, could the different names the character goes by, as well as the other characters, those who aren’t Superman, but are in his close circle–be made to correspond to the different psychoanalytical divisions?  Briefly, then, here is my own reckoning of the psychoanalytical breakdown of this unique narrative subject–the images that represent each division, using my own explicitly-chosen combination of common labels:

• Ego ideal: Superman, Jonathan Kent, Jor El
• Ego: Superman/Clark Kent (as a singular personality known by two names; one at a time, given the immediate context)
• Unconscious: Kal El?  Or, given that the unconscious is so notably the home of denied desire, is this personality even extant in the majority of Superman stories? 

On the other hand, the elements populating the character’s unconscious might be projected, by the content creators, onto the characters of Superman’s foes, especially given how many of them wish to supplant him as the center of the narrative realm.  (See: Superboy and other Not-Superman, pending).

[5] For a well-examined instance of the narrative effects of averting meaningful deaths, see DC’s Flashpoint.  There, when Bruce Wayne is killed instead of his parents, Thomas and Martha take on bastardized versions of the Batman and Joker identities, seemingly to perpetuate that essential conflict.  For as dark as the mainline DC Universe has become since The Dark Knight Returns, the fates of the Waynes and others in the Flashpoint timeline are considerably less desirable.

Deleted Scenes: Strange Visitor – Not-necessarily-correlated notes on Superman-as-not-Superman and the linguistic framing of the (situation of the) trace

The following is material cut from an early draft of Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero. The full text is accessible on Academia.edu at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitorBook, or via Google Drive at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitor

Superman-as-not-Superman: Given the parameters of superheroic fiction, there are various ways that that dis-identification could be rendered strictly, ‘materially’ true–imposters, for example, are a well-worn plot trope–but the statement is generally meant to be taken more in terms of psychosocial identity politics: that character has done something inconsistent enough with his own mediated identity that he has rendered himself no longer appropriate, in the view of the public, to the assumption of that identity. As though the physical body that had, to that point, occupied the responsibilities, powerset, even costume of that hero had been removed and the vacated shell of the superheroic aspect of the identity has been put up for auction, part and parcel¹.

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The derridean trace is the contextually-influenced, discursively determined outline of a concept–any and every concept of anything–as it exists in language in a constant state of the absence of definitive, universally-employed identificatory terms. the indeterminacy of definition is but the effect of a linguistic structure that provides its users with a potentially-infinite number of ways of expressing everything expressible. Even the broadest definitions of the most well-used terms are inexorably context-dependent, so that the sense of those terms is made dynamic through their very employment. The trace, then, constitutes the outline of the understanding of an identity always within, through, but not necessarily limited to the unique set of contextual circumstances. The trace consists of the historical, experiential, fully contextual, inescapably subjective understanding of what qualifies as the subject being identified v. not.

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Saussure points out that, “in language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms (Course in General Linguistics 120).” Aside from temporality, definition through negation is the other major reason why the edges of a trace, the boundaries of an identity, are vague and permeable; it’s so much more often about who a superhero isn’t–a killer, simple, sane, capable of living in social isolation–than who he is. Add temporality back in to provide room for the actions of that subject, and the permeability of the trace becomes, indeed, the very demand for change, for becoming. “I” represents not an image of what I am, not some specific, singular statement that absolutely guides me, but rather a number of spans going forward, spaces in which I might initiate, engage with, or react to a situation in a number of different ways, represent myself as a number of different types of people to whatever subjects are present or concerned, including myself². And everyone involved will narrativize it, if only in their own memories, but certainly as they communicate those events to others.

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Bakhtin came to some similar reckoning of the interminability of indefinability, the constant dynamism of subjective, contextualized becoming through constant resubjectification to language, for it happens to language itself as we consider subjects who are wholly conceptual, “… the (relatively) protracted and socially meaningful (collective) saturation of language with specific (and consequently limiting) intentions and accents (“Discourse in the Novel” 293).” As goes the narrative subject, we might count these ‘limiting intentions and accents’ as refinements and reifications of trace elements, which, in being so refined and reified, must also exist in time, in that element that changes and recontextualizes everything, even if only in reference to itself³.

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Note how we linguistically frame the trace here, though: not simply as a thing, even a concept, but as an event—the situation of the trace, its continuing event of its own becoming. This modifier may appear often in our dealings with the trace, but why? Because of the trace’s nature as ‘contextually-influenced and individually, discursively determined’. The seeming contrast between ‘individually’ and ‘discursively’ determined states incites, itself, enough of an identificatory complication to justify referring to the trace itself as a site of necessary deliberation–that deliberation constituting an event, a situation. For the trace concerns the definition of the subject within and with language—be that subject a person, a concept, even a word—and, given language’s aforementioned expansiveness…

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1 Such, in fact, is, almost point for point, the origin of the supervillain Sinestro: his story begins as he is serving as a trusted member of the Green Lantern Corps, but, when he violates his oath and succumbs to fear, the sentient ring that granted him his powers deserts him to find a new recruit.

2 To get sidetracked, ironically enough, by consistency, then: becoming acts on all discursive elements whatever, including public expectation. The important difference (maybe), though, between the trace of a narrative subject’s identity, and the expectations of the public for that identity is that there are, sometimes, more or less canonical documents to authoritatively fall back on in the determination of the trace (no one questions the canonicity of The Avengers #1 to the relevance of a debate on the origins of The Avengers), while there is no ‘magna carta’ for public opinion (Is The Hulk really a good guy? Really???). And yet, we presume, often rightly, that the superhero will indeed conform not just to something within the full span of possibilities engendered by the shape of his trace at the moment, but indeed to the tighter (sometime much tighter) restrictions of public expectation, all in order to be ‘consistent’. But, then, superhero stories are superhero stories…

3 This is a fancy way of referring to, among other things but most conveniently, the common use of age as a discursive identity marker. A certain character may never age, whether only in relation to us, as serialized characters are prone to be ageless–we do not let superheroes or any of their nemeses or supporting casts get old and die because we do not have to. On the other hand, a character might be immortal within their own realm of aging counterparts, whom that person is not like, whom they are, consequently, othered among. Irrespectively, though, we here in the linguistic realm are perfectly capable of yet tagging a specific age onto a character, made meaningful with respect to our own experience of it as media consumers. Peter Parker, for instance, was a teenager when he first appeared–when he was first created, in his first year of existence–in 1962. Today, at materially 54 years of age, he is, across most of his prominent narrative realms, depicted as somewhere between late mid-teens and early-to-mid 30s. Sometimes he’s dead, too (see: Ultimate Spider-Man).

Deleted Scenes: Strange Visitor – Appendix: Krypto-Zoology

The following is material cut from an early draft of Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero. The full text is accessible on Academia.edu at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitorBook, or via Google Drive at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitor

Like Darkseid, Power Girl, and other major figures in Superman’s narratives, Krypto was not introduced in either of the main titles: Action Comics and Superman.  In the mid-1950s, Adventure Comics was home to the tales of  Superboy; Superman’s dog is initially introduced as Superboy’s dog.  But, Moore’s story would show how well he had come to be integrated into the mainstream Superman narrative in the meantime.

In his retrospective review of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, Lucas Siegel observes that, while the mortal sacrifices of Lana Lang and Jimmy Olsen ring hollow, “Krypto… went out like a champ and that one is emotional.”  And Krypto’s fate somewhat foreshadows Jordy Elliot’s own: Krypto takes a life–but he is not able to negotiate the consequences as neatly.  Is this because Krypto is a different kind of not-Superman?  The reader is occasionally privy to Krypto’s lingualized thoughts, verifying that he is not just sentient, but that he is willfully allied with the good guys.  Meanwhile, given Doomsday’s own early, ineffectual relationship with language, he could stand as not-Krypto at least as much as he is not-Superman.  But, Krypto cannot speak to those of his own realm, and that lack of expressibility renders him without an important component of full volition.

Such a pattern of behavior would indicate a greater individual will than in the case of the Eradicator, for instance.  Krypto’s lack of opportunity to participate in discourse–the process of subalterning discussed by Said and Spivak–will likewise constitute a significant question for the project of verisimilitude as rendering technologies continue to develop.  Krypto suffers an imprisonment of a kind, perpetrated not by anyone in his own world, but by the content creators who have shaped that world.  How should a simulataion system be made to render such a character?  Must we ‘let the dog talk’, or should verisimilitude win out?

And what would a simulated Superman have to say about a super-pet that, all of a sudden, he could directly converse with?  From what extant narrative material might a simulation system adapt such a response?  For there is certainly a narrative president of some kind among Superman’s stories, making the effect less strange for him, at least.  For our own part, how would material visitors to that simulated realm be oblige to engage with Krypto, especially were he to not be made lingually-expressive?   Though such may seem fanciful, the question is truly one of how we humans should comport ourselves before emerging intelligences who may not be able to express themselves fully, yet may still have full selves to express–an eminently human problem.  And such will likely be the state for some artificial intelligence in the near future.

Deleted Scenes: Strange Visitor – Narrative Proximities and Not-Superman

The following is material cut from an early draft of Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero. The full text is accessible on Academia.edu at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitorBook, or via Google Drive at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitor

A subsequent revision of this material will appear in a future article on Lois Lane and the “Not-Supermen”

In-narrative proximities can be determined comparatively, based on narrative content evidence.  And, at first, I thought that developing such a list based purely own my own ‘feel’ for each character might be sufficient.  Before I was finished the process of making such informed guesses, though, I had come to recognize that this step would not be an appropriate endpoint.  I have, however, included my initial guesses as to proximities before taking the subsequent step of inventorying and setting score ranges for the various trace elements and ranking each character accordingly.  Even as some elements are usefully quantified, I’ve included my initial arrangement below because it might help remind us of the absolute basis of identity–its construction, refinement, and assessment–in subjectivity.

So then: My initial, presumptive, largely undercooked arrangement of the various narrative subjects to be examined in this chapter, from furthest from the center of their narrative realm–Superman himself–to closest, with some notes:

• Brainiac – Brainiac is set the furthest from Superman here and would prove to stand as one of the most distant from the center in final scoring.  He was one of the only to so align with expectations.
• Bizarro – Bizarro scored far closer to Superman than I give him credit for here.  During research, he also proved unexpectedly compelling for how he could and couldn’t be compared to his antecedent.
• Zod and Darkseid – These characters fall close to where I expected in proximity to both Superman and one another.  That similar distance is interesting for how distinct their respective goals have proven to be.
• Lex – The scored version of Lex did not end up as far away from the center as I thought he would.  In fact, after scoring, Lex comes to occupy one of the most interesting positions among all the not-Superman, kicking off a discussion about the shape of the assessment itself.
• Superman-as-not-Superman and other variants – How is Superman not self-identical?  In some surprising ways.  However, this group did not exist as a singular unit during initial research.  I did not score occasionally-referenced figures such as Superman One Million, Superman Red & Blue, Sunshine Superman, Calvin Ellis, and others.  Instead, the entire concept of the out-of-character Superman will be examined toward the end of this chapter, in light of other important considerations.  Meanwhile, a non-DC character such as MiracleMan lands closer to Superman after scoring, but the Plutonian, another non-DC figure, lands at about this place in the overall rankings.  In the deeper explications to come, though, I have opted to group the two characters together because of their similar non-DC backgrounds.
• ‘Death of Superman’ not-Supermen – Also referred to here as the ‘Reign of’ not-Supermen , this brace of figures was grouped together in earlier steps of this research, but scoring would make clear the need for their dispersion¹.  Steel and the Superboy clone subsequently land close to Superman, but the Eradicator, Cyborg Superman, and Doomsday are scattered among the rest of the list.
• Supergirl/Power Girl –  Despite disparate scores, I am still ambivalent over Supergirl and Power Girl’s independence from each other. Supergirl is significantly closer to the center, but Power Girl is perhaps more remarkably derivative.  I am still unsure Power Girl even is a not-Superman, but she is a member of the Superman family (except when she isn’t).  She thus stands as an example unto herself of how complex social relationships can get, even (or especially) in superhero comic books.
• Jordy Elliott – Jordy didn’t score far from my prediction, but I am surprised that he scored somewhat farther away than I placed him, and noticeably separate from the Superman Family.
• The Blur (Smallville) – As Superman is so multimodal, so there is at least one television version that has a difficult relationship with Superman-as-Superman.  This is also the version of the character I was least familiar with and, therefore, whose problems were among the most emergent for me as a consumer².  Accordingly, his final proximity to the center in light of his differences from the norm is surprising.
• Injustice’s High Councilor – In the final scoring, this fallen Superman would land farther away from the center than I expected–and in a jarring proximity to Jordy Elliot.  But I think I have identified the error of my initial guess; before scoring, I could have over-considered the circumstances of his first sin–the killing of the Joker, responsible for the deaths of his wife and the metropolitans–rather than properly considering all the subsequent crimes he would go on to commit as his world’s new overlord.
• Superboy – Superboy stands closest to Superman, as expected.  And yet, he has one of the most problematic relationships with his own future.  Superboy’s proximity to Superman–his distance from the name and life he will ostensibly assume–will be regarded closely.
• Superboy Prime – Prime does not rank closest to Superman–for a whole range of reasons, he is closer to Zod and Darkseid–nor had I thought he would. He is placed here (and similarly in the body of this chapter) instead because of his unique relationship with Superboy proper and Superman directly.  Prime is a not-Superman, but he is also very much a not-Superboy.

Footnotes

1. Thereby validating the scoring process as, if nothing else, an element that brings a valuable difference in perspective.
2.  See, for instance, the complicated fate of Clark Kent’s folks in Smallville, examined in ‘The Kent Farm Report’ (to be published).

Random Theory

As narrative elements, villains and pillow talk scenes don’t intersect a ton.

Random Theory

So, as The Vision in the MCU, Paul Bettany has been thoroughly motion captured.  Any other issues aside, his likeness could be used indefinitely, in a wide range of capacities.  Meanwhile, there’s been talk that Wonder Man, another Marvel superhero, will eventually by introduced as played by Nathan Fillion.

In the comic plots, Vision possessed some portion of Wonder Man’s consciousness.

So, what if we were to eventually get a CGI rendering of Paul Bettany, but motion-controlled based on a performance by Nathan Fillion?  Which performer would ‘own’ what part of that performance and how would it potentially impact our own impressions of those two actors and the characters they were portraying as independent/inter-related?  How would the performers end up relating to one another?  Would Fillion be playing Bettany just by looking like him, even if he were playing as Wonder Man?

The Trouble with Naming

What have we already named?  What do we not yet have a ‘proper name’ for?  In English, we tend to rely on ‘thing’ as a placeholder until we’ve come to consensus on a better term–or, at least, until various parties have submitted their respective names for the subject and one or a few have shaken out in regular discourse.

Here, then, maybe the start of that process.  What do/should we call those media products that are made to appear within a narrative?  Products that, at some level, are still made for us–the real-world audience–yet which don’t directly acknowledge any intended audience but that of the narrative in which they appear?  Should we be calling them full-fledged ‘media products’ in the first place, or does their contingency on the larger narrative somehow negate the fact that they were yet produced and can be independently viewed, at least sometimes?  For example, see the comic book that appears in the trailer for Logan, a page of which was released via Tumblr, as well as the newscast that serves as the trailer for Stranger Things‘ second season.

Are these ‘inward facing’? ‘Narrative-bound’? ‘Viewer-blind’?  None seems entirely accurate for the unusual position of this type, though I’m not yet sure that the two examples cited above are even the same animal themselves.  Specifically, the end of the Stranger Things newscast, in which we see only an empty chair, might be the point at which that product specifically stops being for its own narrative realm and starts being only for us.

Suggestions for tagging this phenomenon would be welcome.

 

Random Theory

Another attempt to summarize my perspective that will only seem inaccurate later:

At this point, it’s seeming as though the only notable difference between narrative and linguistic subjects (fictional characters and real people) is one of physicality in this linguistic, physical realm (lacanian ‘reality’): we linguistic subjects have bodies, narrative subjects don’t and may or may not ever. But, in discourse–communication via representations that pretty much constitutes all media by definition–physicality is what’s precisely not needed, worked around, obviated. So, the distinction between the subject who has a body and the one who doesn’t, at least in how they’re treated, how their identities are socially understood, how they are defined in discourse, doesn’t amount to much.

Especially since we’re also getting around the lack of fictional bodies by making our fictions more realistically interactive in various ways, such as gaming, VR cinema, and even ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ YouTube series.

Cross-Promotion: Unauthorized Comic Books!

So, I randomly wrote a script for an issue of the Batman comic.  This is in no way authorized nor endorsed by DC and I have no plans to make any money from it (unless someone at DC reads it and wants to hire me–in which case, screw academia: gimmie that money!).

So, give it a read.  It’s short and you might actually like it.