Graduation Year
2012
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.L.A.
Degree Granting Department
Humanities and Cultural Studies
Major Professor
Scott Ferguson, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Amy Rust, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Margit Grieb, Ph.D.
Keywords
3-D, Augmented Reality, Digital Media, Film, Neoliberalism
Abstract
This work theorizes the contemporary attraction to three-dimensional media. In doing so, it reframes ongoing debates surrounding digital three-dimensional media in order to critique the neoliberal social relations such media engender. I argue that the contemporary interest in dimensionality, especially regarding digital media, is symptomatic of a broad cultural shift, wherein millions of lives are now essentially being lived through two-dimensional, "flat" media, which have consequently generated a lack of spatial relationships and a craving or desire for "depth." This "desire for depth" has arisen in contemporary society because people are being "spread too thin" through a combination of the radical connectivity afforded by digital technology and the demand for limitless flexibility imposed by the market: a condition I call hyper-extensionality. My work examines how neoliberal capitalism necessitates the individualized, radical connectivity now experienced by millions of people, and subsequently generates our attraction to three-dimensionality in digital media. Through analyses of select, prominent forms of three-dimensional media, I show that commercial three-dimensional media largely functions to maintain the status quo by helping alleviate the feeling of "depthlessness" in the social unconscious.
Scholar Commons Citation
Brecese, Justin Alan, "Out of Our Depth: Hyper-Extensionality and the Return of Three-Dimensional Media" (2012). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/3990
Included in
American Studies Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, Other Communication Commons, Other Sociology Commons
