Category: Media Studies
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“Desperate Living” (film): John Waters’ Science Fiction Dystopia, by Alan N. Shapiro
Maybe it was the mono sound of my budget-priced video recorder, which the salesperson at Saturn Hansa had dubbed the ‘Trabant’ (der Trabi, das Symbol eines verschwundenen Landes, the symbol of a disappeared country, hat heute längst Kultstatus erreicht, has long since attained cult status) of VCRs.
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“Jurassic Park” (film): Newman Eaten by a Dilophosaurus, by Alan N. Shapiro
Steven Spielberg’s stated goal for the film Jurassic Park (1993) is to achieve what he calls “total realism.” He wants to make cinema coincide with the real. This is a symptomatic fantasy that Jean Baudrillard diagnoses in The Evil Demon of Images as “cinema attempting to abolish itself in the absolute of reality.”