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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - Framing Death: Death, Film and Digital Media
Text.Serial.Journal
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Projects & Abstracts
2015-03-01
2021-09-21
2015-03-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Nicolò Gallio
2015/03/01
Università di Bologna – Alma Mater Studiorum
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en
Ph.D. Thesis Abstract - Framing Death: Death, Film and Digital Media
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16414/17046
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Framing Death: Death, Film and Digital Media
Nicolò Gallio / Ph.D. Thesis Abstract1
Università di Bologna – Alma Mater Studiorum




   As reported by the news headlines handling death footage seems to concern
viewers, producers and broadcasters, since its emergence is increasingly evident and
death is perceived as a pervasive presence scattered throughout the mediascape.
   This dissertation focuses specifically on audiovisual content, and considers
how cinema, and its derivative forms, is capable of recording an event involving
actual deaths. It attempts to map some trends ranging from silent films to the
contemporary digital media, taking into account case studies in moral panic such
as the mythology of snuff movies, as well as specific subgenres like mondo and
those horror films that blurred the line between fact and fiction.
   After an overview on the international literature on the space of death within
society, which examines the tensions between the urge to think of death as the
ultimate taboo, and its widespread popularity within the so-called necroculture,2
by surveying case studies from broadcast media and the arts chapter 1 questions
the effectiveness of comparing death to pornography and underlines the need for
more complex analytical perspectives.
   Chapter 2 addresses cinema and how filmmakers have dealt with death. Case
studies include examples from the silent era to notable documentaries and
experimental projects, such as The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (Stan
Brakhage, 1971), Nick’s Movie (Wim Wenders, 1981) and The Bridge (Eric Steel,
2006). Given the fact that these films were accused of being pseudo-snuff, the
chapter questions what snuff means today, considering that the label was initially
used by the film industry and the media to refer to urban legends rooted in
the infamous Manson Family murders, as well as to the marketing campaign
for the film Slaughter (Michael Findlay, Roberta Findlay, 1971). Since snuff is
not the only subgenre dealing with death, commercially successful examples
within shockumentaries and cannibal movies are also taken into account.
Their international reception shows that they align to snuff as they were highly
problematic to frame from a critical perspective, particularly when they were


1
 Ph.D. Thesis supervised by Prof. Guglielmo Pescatore. For information: nico.gallio@gmail.com
2
 Fabio Giovannini, Necrocultura. Estetica e cultura della morte nell’immaginario di massa,
Castelvecchi, Roma 1998.

                                                   Cinéma & Cie, vol. XV, no. 24, Spring 2015
                                        Nicolò Gallio


involved in media frenzy cases such as the Video Nasties. Ultimately they are
calling for new categories, like the ones provided by Jeffrey Sconce “paracinema”3
or Mikita Brottman “offensive films.”4
   However, how exactly were death scenes incorporated into feature films and
documentaries? Chapter 3 examines the structure of shockumentaries, snuff
movies and very well known footage depicting real deaths, questioning how their
features (script, editing, format, style, credits, “codas” etc.) played a decisive role
when sequences portraying actual killings, or staged one passed by for real, were
inserted into these films.
   If this peculiar structure eased to host death footage into horror movies and
documentaries, marketing strategies played a key role in the international suc-
cess of commercial flicks that exploited the idea of death on screen. Chapter 4
overviews films such as Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980) and Snuff
(the 1976 version of Slaughter), which were involved in media panic episodes
precisely because of the fact that their promotional campaigns blurred the line
between reality and fiction. Franchises like Faces of Death and Guinea Pig regu-
larly made headlines all around the world for the same reason, mixing staged
deaths with real ones. Decades later, young filmmakers used the same strategies
to promote and distribute small budget films that exploited the niches of the
most hardcore horror fans, ensuring the success of disturbing low budget films
like the August Underground series.
   Finally, Chapter 5 considers what can be labelled as “death 2.0” While images
of “impending death” in the media are not new (see Barbie Zelizer’s study on the
“about to die paradigm,”5) and neither are deaths recorded by CCTV, personal
cameras or smartphones, digital media today allow for their widespread circula-
tion and manipulation. Death is therefore scattered into the contemporary me-
diascape, in the form of compilations of deadly accidents, war footage re-edited
for online consumption or shocking documentation of killings recorded by the
perpetrators themselves. As crime news show, cases such as the hunt for Luka
Rocco Magnotta and the media frenzy unleashed by the online dissemination of
his gruesome video 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick remind us that there is a high concern for
the distribution of such content on the Internet.
   Nowadays, footage depicting real deaths is easily remixed and broadcast
through video sharing websites such as YouTube, or streamed on the so-called
shock sites. Platforms like Bestgore.com are the new media outlet for death vid-
eos and can thus be considered as ephemeral archives because it is very prob-
lematic to frame their services. As Sue Tait noted writing about Ogrish.com,
when shock sites are rebranded they switch from exploitation websites, source


3
  Jeffrey Sconce, “‘Trashing’ the Academy: Taste, Excess, and an Emerging Politics of Cinematic
Style,” in Screen, vol. 36, no. 4, Winter 1995, pp. 371-393.
4
  Mikita Brottman, Offensive Films, Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville 2005.
5
  Barbie Zelizer, About to Die: How News Images Move the Public, Oxford University Press, New
York 2010.

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                       Framing Death: Death, Film and Digital Media


of Internet memes, to digital spots addressing citizen journalism issues.6 As this
dissertation aims to show, on these platforms communities are involved in troll-
ing and flame wars, but users also find the way to open a debate on the space of
death in the public sphere, considering the relationship between death footage,
gore and body horror, censorship issues, clashes between online services and
mainstream media, and calling for more transparent policies regarding the way
death is manipulated by broadcasters.




6
  Sue Tait, “Pornographies of Violence? Internet Spectatorship on Body Horror,” in Critical
Studies in Media Communication, vol. 25, no. 1, 2008, pp. 91-111.

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