The phantom referent : perceptual realism in cinema

• Main Author: Boh, Aloysius Chee Kai
• Other Authors: Stephen Teo Kian Teck
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Communication::Visual communication; DRNTU::Social sciences::Communication::Visual literacy; DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Film::Criticism; DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Film::Digital; DRNTU::Humanities::Philosophy; DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Photography; DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Film; DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Painting; DRNTU::Social sciences::Psychology::Affection and emotion; DRNTU::Social sciences::Mass media::Broadcasting::Motion pictures and films::Film theory and criticism; DRNTU::Social sciences::Mass media::Media effects
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66858
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

We live in an age where photorealistic objects in films do not necessarily have physical referents — look no further than the dinosaurs in Jurassic World (2015), and the wormhole in Interstellar (2014). Every living person has neither seen dinosaurs in the flesh, nor an actual wormhole. Yet when people watch Jurassic World or Interstellar, their typical response (“That looks so real!”) to the on-screen dinosaurs or wormhole is an implicit attempt to locate real-world referents of the aforementioned cinematic objects where there are, physically speaking, none. If we are to retain this persisting intuition that there is an indexical relationship between the photograph and the photographed object in the context of films like Jurassic World and Interstellar, then a new type of referent has to be posited — and it is what I call the “phantom referent”. Basically, my thesis offers an ontology of the phantom referent. Since I employed a qualitative and critical approach in writing this paper, my critiques and defences of arguments from various primary texts on film theory and philosophy of film, and my generalisation of everyday experiences constitute my theoretical stance.