Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change

by Vivian Sobchack

Two thousand years ago, Ovid asked his readers to imagine metamorphoses in which men and women became flowers and beasts. Today, before our cinema-savvy eyes, people melt and re-form as altogether new they "morph." This volume explores what digital morphing means -- both as a cultural practice specific to our times and as a link to a much broader history of images of human transformation. Meta-Morphing ranges over topics that include turn-of-the-century "quick-change" artists, Mesoamerican shamanic transformation, and cosmetic surgery; recent works such as Terminator 2, Star Deep Space Nine, Heavenly Creatures, and Forrest Gump; and the transformations imagined by Kafka, Proust, and Burroughs. The contributors look not only at the technical wizardry behind digital morphing, but also at the history and cultural concerns it expresses.

Genres: Film

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Vivian Sobchack was the first woman elected President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, and is on the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute. Her essays have appeared in journals such as Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film Comment, camera obscure, Film Quarterly and Representations. Her books include Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film; The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience; and Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, and she has edited two anthologies: Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change; and The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event. Her research interests are eclectic: American film genres, philosophy and film theory, history and phenomenology of perception, historiography and cultural studies.