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Reviewed by:
  • Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick Change
  • R. L. Rutsky
Vivian Sobchack, ed. Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick Change. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2000. xxiii + 286 pp.

The essays in Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick Change take as their starting point the phenomenon of computerized “morphing” and related forms of computer-generated effects, particularly their use in the films and videos of the 1990s. Morphing and digital compositing have, in fact, come to play an increasingly common role in contemporary film and video production, and a number of books in recent years have attempted to summarize the technologies and techniques involved in digital effects. This volume, however, is concerned less with technical issues than with the cultural, historical, and philosophical questions raised by the increasing use of compugraphic effects. Thus, although the majority of essays in this volume address themselves specifically to the use of morphing and computerized effects in film and video, the premise of Meta-Morphing is that morphing is more than simply an interesting filmic technique. Rather, morphing is treated here as a complex cultural figure of transformation, with associations that extend from contemporary plastic surgery to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In a sense, Meta-Morphing attempts to “morph” morphing, stretching the term’s meaning beyond disciplinary boundaries by considering it in different cultural contexts and from differing interpretive perspectives. To the extent that it takes morphing as an interdisciplinary cultural object, Meta-Morphing is as much a work of cultural studies as it is of media studies proper.

Of course, even if Meta-Morphing addressed only the rise of computerized warping and morphing in film and video, it would be of interest to many readers. The essays that do consider film and video morphing are generally concerned to place it within a larger historical and cultural context. Several of the volume’s essays, for example, attempt to trace a shift from the big-budget action films of 1980s, with their reliance on hypermasculine stars, to the less character-driven, effects-oriented blockbusters of the 1990s. The role of morphing and other digital effects in this shift is significant, and can be seen, as these essays argue, as symptomatic of a reconfigured if still oppressive notion of masculinity or, alternatively, of a more “posthuman” cinema of “attractions,” in which character and narrative are deemphasized. Other essays in the collection examine the historical antecedents of cinematic computer morphing, from physiognomic theories to the animations of the Fleisher Studios and the brothers Quay to turn-of-the century quick-change artists. Although some of the essays occasionally descend into tendentious readings of the digital effects in particular films (often from the early 1990s, with James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and the Michael Jackson music video Black or White (1991) singled out for repeated consideration), the majority provide worthwhile analysis of the broader social and aesthetic implications of morphing.

Ultimately, then, the essays in Meta-Morphing move from the topic of computerized morphing into considerations of metamorphosis more generally. At its best, the volume brings into productive juxtaposition a range of cultural phenomena concerned with transformation and its possibilities, from notions of shape-shifting to mathematical theories of four-dimensional objects to different [End Page 254] forms of magical conjuring. Indeed, an important underlying thread in Meta-Morphing is the link between morphing and various types of magical transformation, from the cinematic magic of Georges Méliès to shamanic rituals to spiritualist ideas of multi-dimensionality. Other essays treat topics as diverse as performance artist Orlan’s surgical transformations of her own body to the popularity of “transformers” (such as The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers) in children’s animation, toys, and games.

By some traditional notions of scholarship, of course, Meta-Morphing may be seen as too diverse in its choice of topics, too scattered in its focus. Traditionalists will no doubt see its multidisciplinary essays and its emphasis on popular culture as symptomatic of worst tendencies of cultural studies. They will therefore miss the transformative possibilities that lie not just in the topics that this book covers, but also in its interdisciplinary...

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