‘All the world’s a screen’: the fractal image as an instrument of control over the world in Steven Spielberg’s cinema

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i7.10532

Keywords:

Spielberg, Fabelmans, fractal image, classicism, post-modernism

Abstract

This paper analyses how the fractioning of the frame and its partition into sub-images are used by Steven Spielberg, not only as an expedient of narrative enunciation but also as a founding feature to build a discourse on the cinematic image and its capacity to be an instrument of understanding and knowledge of the ‘real’. An analysis through Spielberg’s filmography shows how his autobiographical work The Fabelmans is both an explication and a point of arrival of a path of rethinking on the relationship between Subject/Image/World that unfolds throughout his career. The notion of ‘fractal image’ is thus used to enucleate a central aspect of Spielberg’s mise-en-scène as it manifests the director’s theoretical elaboration; this category also allows to position him as an intermediate figure between classicism and post-modernism.

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Author Biography

Carlo Ugolotti, University of Parma/Historical Institute of the Resistance and the Contemporary Age of Parma

Carlo Ugolotti (Parma, 1987) holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Turin (2017); he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Cinema, Photography and Television at the University of Parma and he is post-doctoral researcher at the Istituto Storico della Resistenza e dell’Età Contemporanea. From 2020 to 2022, he was Post-doctoral Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for the History of Art (Rome). His main fields of research are the relationship between Cinema and History and that between Society and Popular Imagination, especially concerning Italian and American contexts. Among his publications: La Giungla d’asfalto. L’influenza della mitologia populista antiurbana nel crime film hollywoodiano (1905-1929), in V. Coladonato, A. Sangiovanni (a cura di), Cinema e populismo. Modelli e immaginari di una categoria politica (Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli [CZ], 2019); Il campo PG122: una storia di cinema e prigionieri, in M. Minardi (ed.), Prigionieri in Italia: Militari alleati e campi di prigionia (1940-1945) (MUP, Parma 2021); Mulholland Drive: ovvero della distruzione dello statuto d’autorità dell’immagine in Franco Lonati (ed.), “We don’t stop here”: 20 anni di Mulholland Drive (QuiEdit, Verona, 2022).

Published

2023-12-15

How to Cite

Ugolotti, C. (2023). ‘All the world’s a screen’: the fractal image as an instrument of control over the world in Steven Spielberg’s cinema. SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (7), 376–402. https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i7.10532

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