Simulacrum and game. The cinematographic image-excess as a reflection of a hyperreal society

Abstract

The present study addresses the concept of the “image-excess” (Lipovetsky & Serroy, 2009), a cinematographic resource that manages to introduce the viewer into a dizzying succession of hyperspectacular visual scenes. It is from the extraordinary technological evolution of the last decades when digital creations (virtual realities) have generated images in the cinema that come to compete with reality, overlapping it and making its differentiation complex for the receiver. In the text we address the determining role that simulation and game play as they are key drivers for the construction of that image-excess, which is established between virtual parameters of neo-baroque and sublime characteristics. Therefore, we will delve into knowing how the simulation develops itself in the field of cinema, and how the game unfolds its full potential to act in the mind of the viewer with the firm intention of inducing him to a hyper-reality, the meta-reality that cinema supposed. Although some cinematographic productions present the limitation known as uncanny valley by producing a rejection of credibility in the observer, our main conclusion underlines the need for attraction that the excess-image must arouse, so that simulacrum and game make an appearance.