頁籤選單縮合
題名 | Ebola Syndrome: Media and the Meltdown of Guiding Distinctions= |
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作者 | Steintrager,James A.; |
期刊 | Tamkang Review |
出版日期 | 20050300、20050600 |
卷期 | 35:3/4 民94.春-夏 |
頁次 | 頁27-60 |
分類號 | 541.83 |
語文 | eng |
關鍵詞 | Ebola virus; Mass media; Systems theory; Ace; Climate; Hollywood; Hong Kong cinema; |
英文摘要 | In the 1995 Hollywood film Outbreak, which drew heavily on Richard Preston's best-selling non-fictional exposé concerning the Ebola virus The Hot Zone, a virulent virus of African origins erupts in a small town in the United States and threatens to engulf humanity at large. I argue that this film, while it acknowledges and plays on contemporary concerns about globalization and ecological damage, simultaneously provides the viewer with a reassuringly outmoded world picture. In particular, the film sends the message that familiar boundaries of race and nation, although threatened, remain intact. Similarly, while the virus is distinctly amoral, the depiction of those who combat it reaffirms individual ethical action. Taking the virus as a figure for contemporary information technologies, however, we can see that the film's messages are actually undermined by its medium. Like the virus, film and related technologies undo national borders, racial ideologies, and put into question human agency, even where content works against this. I then consider two recent theories of mass media in order to determine their aptness to explain this clash of medium and message. Paul Virilio's theory that technology once it reaches a certain thresholds of speed and size changes the way in which we experience reality resonates with the notion of the Ebola virus as figure for contemporary mass media. On the other hand, Virilio's work also shows a post-structuralist tendency to revert to reality as ground, even if only as lost and mourned. Niklas Luhmann's work on mass media, while it avoids the pitfalls of foundationalism, is too sanguine in its assessment that contemporary media can provide a construction of reality. I conclude with an examination of how the Hong Kong horror film Ebola Syndrome suggests that the pop-cultural containment strategies of Outbreak-as well as the more theoretical strategies of Virilio and Luhmann-are no longer viable. |
本系統之摘要資訊系依該期刊論文摘要之資訊為主。