Edward J Anderson

his article examines the 2013 found footage horror film, WNUF Halloween Special, and its use of verisimilitude to enhance the viewer's engagement and immersion in the narrative. The film is presented as a VHS recording of a local news broadcast from 1987, documenting a live investigation of a haunted house in River Hill Township. The narrative structure of the film is complex and meticulous, incorporating various elements of found footage and fake newscasts to create a realistic and believable environment.  The article explores how the film uses verisimilitude to blur the lines between reality and fiction, and how this approach heightens the viewer's sense of fear and unease. The use of real-time broadcasting techniques, such as commercials and weather updates, adds to the immersive quality of the film. The article also examines the role of ambiguity in the film, particularly in regards to the fate of one of the main characters, Veronica.  The article argues that WNUF stands as a unique example of found footage horror that successfully maintains verisimilitude throughout its narrative. The film's use of clear narrative circumstances and competent camerawork helps to challenge the boundaries between reality and fiction, presenting the horror movie not as a mere artifact, but as a fragment of our real world. The article suggests that WNUF's success in maintaining verisimilitude could set a precedent for future found footage films.

The dynamics of immediacy and mediation are examined through the lens of a media that problematizes presence through ever-more realistic, ever-more proliferating representations.  Such representations are, themselves, a product of a human discourse that has become more scrutinizing and doubtful of 'the truth' as our abilities to assume the role of the other have both expanded and become more and more shunned.

The structures of ‘discovered manuscript’ stories—fiction presented as the recovered chronicles of a disappeared or deceased author—suggest that they are influential antecedents of an emergent cinematic sub-genre: found footage horror.  Poe’s ‘Ms. Found in a Bottle’ and Lovecraft’s ‘Call of Cthulu’, two prominent examples of the discovered manuscript form—and themselves works of genre fiction—are not simply obscurely ancestoristic; parallels in plot, organization, and other elements of form and function point to deeper psychosocial connections between these texts and today’s found footage horror film. 

Often, third-person narrative fiction endeavors to create conditions by which the audience member can immerse himself in the world of the story; this is usually accomplished through an engaging narrative style and compelling plot structure.  Conversely, the discovered manuscript story and found footage horror film eschew world-building and other content-based approaches, employing instead a set of strategies which invite the reader or viewer to imagine that what they are witnessing takes place in our own world.  The surviving record, be it text or film, is thus incidental to, rather than constructive of, the events unfolding, thereby lending a ‘medium-less’ sense of reality to the events the viewer or reader is exposed to.  This particular type of suspension of disbelief is achieved through the establishment of a ‘chain of delivery’ between the archivist/protagonist and the audience; the presentation itself implies that the materials of that media have been recovered from the environment in which they were “lost”, then delivered to a distributor.  Yet, it takes no more than token evidence, such as a brief introduction and explanation of the context—even less in some cases—to establish a concrete portion of that chain which is then accepted for the whole.  Thus, a portion of this paper will examine of the elements of the chain of delivery, including the overtly presented and the presumed, determinations of what constitutes an appropriate link in that chain, and analyses of the various approaches to establishing the chain of delivery taken by the particular texts and films under examination. 

As the chain of delivery is often one of the only sources of context in this literature and these films, this paper will also examine the peculiarities of the genre that make a dearth of background not only acceptable, but generally preferred.  Even if, as in the case of The Blair Witch Project, the footage starts out as the basis for a documentary, the conditions that precipitate the form within the fictional environment—the fact that the footage is ‘found’—demand some unexpected and perilous development which, in turn, commensurately redefines the role of the camera, those who wield it, and even the intended viewer.

The main focus of discussion will include the Poe and Lovecraft texts, as well as three films; The Blair Witch Project (1999), Cloverfield (2008), and The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007).  Though different in non-structural ways, Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project share quintessential traits of the found footage form; the path of each narrative moves from endurance and attempted escape into an intimate exploration of the characters’ views on their own flaws, fears, mistakes, or mortality.  In The Poughkeepsie Tapes, however, we will examine a radical recasting of elements.  As the representative of what may be an evolution of the sub-genre, the Dowdle brothers’ film demands the viewer to not just passively view trauma, but to take responsibility for a pseudo-complicity derived from a skewing of the camera’s view.  The implications of this “killer’s camera” perspective will be explored at length. 

A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2011 Southern Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference, held in Atlanta, GA.

Portions originally presented at Georgia State University's New Voices 2012 Conference.  An analysis of the 1932 Hollywood adaptation of Poe's 'Murders in the Rue Morgue' (1841), witch special consideration for the evolving communications structures and media possibilities that demanded a retrofitting of the short story's plot.  The role of language and the influence of psychoanalytical representations are also closely observed.

“So, which was better: the book or the film?” The answer is always the same, yet this fallacious question has become the cornerstone of modern adaptation discourse. Our objective for this course will be to reframe the ways that we
consider and discuss adaptations, from text to film and beyond. The scope of our discussion will range from deep
examinations of particular passages and scenes to the re-definition of concepts and re-shaping of terminology. Instead of considering adaptation as a ‘lit-centric’ field, one in which the value of a film is based on its ‘fidelity’ to the text, we will look at the ways that both film and literature are the products of various influences, including each other.
And you’re getting the chance to watch movies for credit.

What can beat that?

Despite what you may have heard, we’re not reading and writing less, but more. A lot more. Given all the ways we
communicate with one another, whether via email, texting, social media, or the good old memo, business recognizes that one of the most valuable tools it can acquire and cultivate is good writers. In this course, we’ll explore as many of the means of business communication as can be fit into a semester, and we’ll also explore some of the ways that business may be doing business in the next few years and how today’s communication-savvy workers will have to adapt to stay relevant and hirable.

My composition pedagogy focuses on the development of critical thinking skills through the practical analysis of media that the students are interacting with on a regular basis out in the world.  Students present articles, videos, social media products, and other pieces for group discussion.  Issues of audience, ideology, and the effect of the media format are discussed both in-class and in essays.

Also available for review at https://tinyurl.com/StrangeVisitor.

We recognize myths for what they indicate about the values and beliefs of the cultures who were the authors and audiences of those myths; many of the earliest communicators of myth were telling stories about subjects they counted as people (somewhat) like themselves. Yet, despite our modern sophistication, today’s consumers of narrative still often treat fictions as though they are real, thinking and feeling people.  We are introduced to Superman, for instance, as a fiction, but circumstance often leads consumers to discursively treat that invented hero as a human subject.  Now, though, we verge on a technological future in which just such sympathies might become functionally useful. In our modern science fiction like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Westworld, we have already begun to imagine how we will come to treat our narrative inventions of tomorrow. Strange Visitor: Subjectivity, Simulation, and the Future of the First Superhero begins to ask what our actual responsibilities will become when fictions can be rendered with volition.  In its opening chapters, the text studies how we humanize a figure like Superman in our own perceptions, and how that treatment--along with his continuing narrative development--makes him a prime candidate for an experiment in complex, highly verisimilitudinous simulation.  Superman is a central point of consideration here simply because there is so much of him to consider. He may be the most content-dense fiction ever created, but the innumerable opportunities consumers have had to get to know the character mean that he is also eminently familiar.  Superman has maintained his presence in our media and discourses, across the decades, as consumer populations have continued to grow and our communications structures have commensurately evolved and expanded. Superman is the subject of this study not because he has become so popular, but because he has managed to stay that way at a particularly sharp inflection point in the history of human communications. 

But, the Man of Steel is often generalized as infallible and, therefore, rather dull.  The first part of this work--an expansive psychological assessment--troubles such a presumption, though, by examining the complex mind that has accrued within decades of narrative, across media, and which must be carefully navigated in any exhaustive analysis.  This first section also considers Superman’s relationship with his media consumers: from how we use him to form childhood bonds with one another, to how we respond to his continuing humanization.  For, Superman is powerfully determined by how audiences actually treat any given instance of the figure as Superman.  Today, we find that we can engage with particularly realistic media, encouraging us even more urgently to invest in the verisimilitude and humanity of the characters and places being presented, and doing so often makes a narrative more appealing.  Accordingly, Superman’s relationship with his own media is particularly convenient to an examination of the intersection between fictional narrative, high technology, and identity negotiation.  To understand Superman's potent humanization, the first half of this text presents an assessment of his identity from multiple essential perspectives, including those of his content creators and consumers, as well as the complex judgments of himself and his fictional society as they have been presented in his narratives. Diegetic evidence is considered in historical and psychological capacities in order to assess how Superman’s media has been constructed--practically from the beginning--to encourage consumers to invest themselves in the figure’s humanity and relatability.

In its second part, Strange Visitor moves from relevant questions of identity into a more practical application of those insights to current and emerging technologies.  We already enjoy vastly interactive ways of engaging with our fictions, and we can anticipate continuing advancements in the verisimilitude, interactability, and spontaneity of artificial intelligences.  Accordingly, fewer and fewer holes in the experiential tapestry of narrative will have to be ignored as both storytelling techniques and rendering technologies continue to evolve.  Soon, what we practically treat as a ‘human’ subject may have more to do with that figure’s specific engageability than with its biology or physical consistency.  Given the view of the detailed project proposal that constitutes the second part of this work, spontaneous, humanlike, autonomous simulations culled from fictional worlds could very well become reality within the foreseeable future.  Emerging from our science fiction dreams, several considerable, real-world technological initiatives would see us reconstruct the intellects of great thinkers, such as Gandhi, Curie, or Hawking. But, reconstructing and functionalizing the consciousness of a real person--living or dead--is an ethically dubious proposition from the start.  Instead of an original personality, though--seemingly ‘complete’ at first, but limited in contextual understanding--what if researchers built a simulated subject from the material of a robustly developed fiction?  If the first of our deep, humanlike engagements with such technology will be the most important, Superman seems a fitting choice, given how we have already embraced him on personal and cultural levels.

But, as real technologies advance toward that imagined outcome, we must also ask how the practical, livable terms of fictionality would change. How would our own responsibilities evolve as we produced and engaged with such personalities?  The prototypical solution I propose here--referred to as the Metropolis Simulation System--could be considered one of Andrew M. Butler’s necessary explorations into the role of the simulacrum (“Postmodernism and Science Fiction” 147).  Whatever of these speculations does or does not bear out, it is my hope with this text to show the reader that we must pay substantial attention to our future relationships with our media and computing technologies. Such a situation need not be feared, though, if we approach with the optimistic combination of thoughtfulness and adventurousness that a character like Superman can inspire.

Strange Visitor is intended for any who might have the interest and/or resources to help realize the rendering of a densely-developed fiction as an exemplary representative of humanlike, fully-engageable general artificial intelligence, including the developers of the many technologies referenced.  Portions of the work might also be used as an introduction into the complexities of mediated identity construction, while the critical questions presented could be utilized in advanced media studies courses, or as portions of a forward-thinking philosophy curriculum. Other segments may benefit discussions on popular fictions generally, the ethics of narrative, or psychological and identiary dynamics.