Immaterial Materiality: Collecting In Live-action Film, Animation, And .

questionable ownership status, and when there are multiple identical copies and no original, therole of ownership is downplayed.On the presumption that digital games are interfering in a long-standing tendency of filmto depict private collecting as a deviant activity while nevertheless upholding the idea of thepublic museum as a valuable tool for education and historical preservation, the examples chosenfor Chapter 2, “‘It Belongs in a Museum:’ Collecting in Live-Action Film,” are drawn from post1980 films. Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999) exhibits fears about the obsessive nature ofcollectors in a neo-noir story about a satanic book collector. Everything is Illuminated (LievSchreiber, 2005) presents a portrait of a socially awkward youth who collects mementoes offamily history. Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series (1989 - 2008) takes a different tactic,centering on the tomb raider extraordinaire (despite Jones’ assertions to the contrary) who is nothimself a collector, merely an “obtainer” of rare objects for museums. Stephen Frears’ HighFidelity (2000) updates the figure of a collector by focusing on a modern-day fanboy, but hiscollecting is still linked to stunted social growth. Finally, the two Night at the Museum movies(Shawn Levy, 2006 and 2009) showcase the museum as the source of supernatural forces andadventure. Ultimately, live-action film employs in a contradictory manner the stereotype of thesocially deviant private collector, but at the same time valorizes the public collection (e.g., themuseum). Theories of cinematic ontology are reflected in the representation of museums andcollecting. According to the traditional understanding of the “indexical” nature of thephotographic image, there is a direct relationship between the photographic image and the object(or subject) photographed. Furthermore, both cinema and museum have been seen to “preserve”the past. The cinema has aligned itself with popular conceptions in regarding public museums asvenerable conservators of the past and private collectors as abnormal and anti-social.3

Although animated films are usually considered part of the cinema, Chapter 3, “‘ToysDon’t Last Forever:’ Collecting in Animated Films” considers them separately from live-actionfilm in order to investigate how the two media forms provoke differing representations ofcollecting. Conventional animation, though still indexical in the sense that the artist’s drawingsor models are photographed, takes a different philosophical stance in its relation to physicalreality. Many digital media scholars have proposed that what is new about digital media is itsshift from fixity to flux, from indexicality to interactivity, but this definition ignores the fact thatanimation has embraced these characteristics all along. All that digital technology is doing is toextend principles that previously existed in animation. In this context, I investigate animation’sseeming disdain for the static nature of traditional collecting seen in several post-1980s animatedfeature films. In The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements and John Musker, 1989), Ariel’s collectionacts as a substitute for her object of desire. The only way she can achieve her goal, however, isby giving up her collection to set out in search of the real thing. In Toy Story 2 (John Lasseterand Ash Brannon, 1999), the tale is told from the perspective of the potentially collected objects,vintage toys. They ultimately reject being part of a collection in favor of being loved, eventhough love in this case leads to inevitable death and abandonment. Collecting once againstsubstitutes for love and companionship in WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008), and is once againabandoned when those goals are achieved. Curious George (Matthew O’Callaghan, 2006)focuses on museum exhibits over collectors, upholding imperialist looting practices andinteractive kid-friendly museums at the same time.All four animated films come down in favor of objects in constant use andtransformation. This tendency arises from the very principles of animation, which construct it asa highly flexible and experimental form, one that emphasizes transformation, change, and the4

fleeting moment, rather than preservation and history. Animated objects are therefore antitheticalto collecting since collections attempt to pin objects down and prevent them from changing.Furthermore, anthropomorphized objects in the film take on subjectivity, which makes the ideaof collecting them more distasteful. Animation is thus counterposed to both preservation andcollecting. The narrative premise of Toy Story 2, for example, is that it is better for toys to beloved, worn out and abandoned by their owners than to be preserved forever in a Japanese toymuseum.The advent of digital gaming changed the paradigm of collecting in visual entertainmentmedia. Though old stereotypes make an occasional appearance (such as the stuffy academicmuseum curator Blathers in Animal Crossing [2002]), for the most part game museums andcollectors break with tradition. The player is asked to be a collector by the very structure of thegames, and the in-game museums serve as a log of the players’ progress through a particulargame. Through an analysis of such digital games as Zork 1: The Great Underground Empire(Infocom, 1980); Animal Crossing (Nintendo, 2002); Kingdom of Loathing (AsymmetricPublications, 2003); Katamari Damacy (Namco 2004); and Pikmin 2 (Nintendo, 2004) the finalchapter, “Jeweled Eggs and Mario Trophies: Collecting in Digital Games,” investigates the wayin which digital entertainment media are inverting the established stereotypes of collecting invisual media. While museums and collectors do not appear frequently as characters or locationsin digital game scenarios, collecting frequently substitutes for the act of “killing” as the primarygoal in many non-violent games such as Katamari Damacy and Animal Crossing. Like killing,collecting represents power and control over the game environment. Thus, collecting is an allimportant activity in video games in a way it is not in live-action film and animation, due, in partto a game’s interactive nature.5

Further, this chapter analyzes the intercultural exchange between Japan and the UnitedStates as a result of Japan’s continued dominance in the video game industry. Because “foreignvideo game” is not a conceptual category for most gamers in the way that “foreign film” is forfilm viewers, Japanese games continue to do well in the US market even though they are notdesigned with US consumers in mind. This means that North American players of these gamesare presented Japanese ideas about material culture and collecting, but often do not recognize theideas as specifically Japanese.Why study film and video games through the lens of collecting? It stems from a broaderinterest in cinematic objects in general as an important element of mise-en-scène that graduallynarrowed to an interest in the caretakers and resting places of highly treasured objects. Combinedwith my observation that there seemed to be much collecting going on in video games and myperception of a flurry of news reports and scholarly work on the uncertain status of digitalobjects being bought, sold, and even stolen on websites (with significant monetary repercussionsto the parties involved), it seemed clear that work was needed to come to terms with the status ofunreal things. Collecting is just one entry point, but a useful one.To take just one example, The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), has madenumerous appearances, not only in films and video games, but in novels and television shows aswell. These include: An American Tale: The Treasure of Manhattan Island (Larry Latham,1998), in which characters consult an AMNH museum expert for help deciphering a treasuremap; several novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, including Relic, Reliquary, andCabinet of Curiosities; 1 Parasite Eve (Square Electronic Arts, 1998), a survival horror RPG1Preston was manager of publications at the American Museum of Natural History for a time. The film version ofRelic was renamed The Relic (Peter Hyams, 1997) and moved from the AMNH in New York to the Field Museumof Natural History in Chicago.6

game in which the protagonist Aya Brea is an New York Police Department rookie who uses theexpertise of AMNH museum employee Dr. Klamp; Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North, 2008)the fourth incarnation of the infamous video game set in “Liberty City,” features The LibertyState Natural History Museum, clearly based on the AMNH; Night at the Museum and Night atthe Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, in which a hapless nigh guard at the AMNH discoversthat the exhibits come to life at night; The Nanny Diaries (Shari Springer Berman and RobertPulcini, 2007) in which a nanny charged with forming upper class tastes in her young wardrebelliously takes him to the AMNH instead; and more. As one of the nation’s most well knownmuseums, it is not surprising that the AMNH captures the imagination of many writers,animators, directors and game designers.Shared locations are only one area of media overlap, however. There is much to be saidabout the stylistic influences traded back and forth between digital games, live-action film, andanimation. Not only are there adaptations of games into films and films into games, but there ismuch debate over the use of “cut scenes” or “cinematics” in digital games. These refer to thetechnique of putting the interactive portion of a game on hold for a short period during which theplayer can do nothing but watch some narrative information unfold. And then there are reviewerslike Jack Witzig of The Cold Spot who occasionally choose to read live-action films throughtheir experience of digital games. Witzig comments that The Ninth Gate’s ponderousatmosphere, for example, has an immersive effect that is not unlike certain digital games:At some point during the film, I realized what, strangely enough, the plotreminded me of--a video game. Or, to be more precise, a full-motion videocomputer game, like Phantasmagoria or, more to the point, Gabriel Knight: The7

Beast Within. In such games, you play a protagonist who must travel fromlocation to location, looking for clues to solve a mystery, all the whileencountering various mysterious and supernatural events. Frequently, the tasksare mundane: finding a key to open a door, saying the right thing to the rightperson, or perhaps the mere act of reading a book. In the way Johnny Depp'scharacter revisits locations or tries to solve a problem using a different tack afterfailing before, The Ninth Gate is revealed to be structured in a similar way. (TheCold Spot)By considering how materiality in the form of collections is affected by the technology used torepresent it as well as how collectors and the act of collecting are portrayed, this studycontributes to the overall picture of the cinema in a digital age.8

2.0SINISTER SOUVENEIRS AND THE “TEARS OF THINGS”: PRIVATE ANDPUBLIC COLLECTING IN THE WESTERN WORLDApproximately thirty percent of the population in the Western world engages in some form ofcollecting at any given time. In Museums, Objects and Collections, Susan M. Pearce claims thatthere is a “collecting mania which has gathered momentum across society through the course ofthis century, and now achieves the dimensions of a major social force” (Pearce Museums 75),and she estimates that one in three Americans is a collector of something. Collecting is thereforean important area of study, and representations of collectors and collecting in visualentertainment media are bound to both reflect and shape popular understanding of the practice.In “Collections and Collecting,” Pearce provides a preliminary report on her sociological studyof collecting in Britain (published fully in Collecting in Contemporary Practice), noting that “Itsresults bore out the findings in North America, and the supposition for Britain, that in theWestern world between a quarter and a third of the population, now collect something.Whatever else collecting is, it is a major social phenomenon” (Collections 19).Most historians trace the origin of collecting as a popular pastime to the curiosity cabinetsthat began to appear in the sixteenth century. These cabinets varied widely in content and couldinclude such things as items connected to local history, rare or exotic artifacts, or heirlooms.Prior to the sixteenth century collecting was more limited, and the public museum had not yetbeen established (the Great Library of Alexandria, associated with the Alexandria Museum,9

founded around the third century BC, is a rare early example, though it was not a publicinstitution in today’s sense since access was limited to scholars and philosophers and there waslittle contact between these intellectuals and craftsmen). 2 In any case, it was not until “about1650 or a little sooner, [that] collecting had become the widespread mania which remains itscharacteristic up to the present day” (Museums 92).Private collections were first linked to affluence and aristocratic status, and the costly andrare items assembled demonstrated the wealth and power of the owner (usually male). In theeighteenth century, public museums gradually emerged as manifestations of Enlightenment eradevelopments in rational thinking and the need to define identity in the nation-state, manyfounded on private or royal collections. The public museum was thus originally an extension ofthe private aristocratic collection and access to exhibits was limited mainly to upper class men.Museums were also intended to help socialize the uncouth masses by exposing them to cultureand imposing civilized behavior on them through museum conduct rules. The immense cost of alarge museum was justified by the nation building it did as it displayed the cultural wealth andprestige of the state. As Pearce explains,The public art museum makes the nation a visible reality, and the visiting publicare addressed as citizens who have a share in the nation. The museum displaysspiritual wealth that is owned by the state and shared by all who belong to thestate. The political abstraction is given symbolic form in the shape of tangible2In antiquity, the word “museum” referred to “a meeting-place where the scholars of the earth should forgather tofix the canons of letters and to extend the scientific horizons of man” (Parsons 135). It has also been understood torefer to the scholars themselves rather than the location in which they gathered (Lee 385). However, it was thelibrary that contained all the documents and objects, and its focus was thus on bringing together the contemporaryresources of the world for use, reproduction and dissemination as much as for preservation. The Alexandria libraryremains a potent symbol of wisdom and knowledge. In Steve Berry’s The Alexandria Link, for example, it issupposed to be the long-lost location of ancient religious secrets which would rock the current political landscape ifthey could be rediscovered.10

“masterpieces”, which exhibit humanity at its best and highest, so identifying thestate with these spiritual values and sharing them with all comers. The museum isthe place where, in exchange for his share in the state’s spiritual holdings, theindividual affirms his attachment to the state. (Museums 100)The construct of the national museum endured without much variation until the 1960s, when acombination of falling attendance and widespread concerns about equal representation andinclusiveness of race, class, and gender spurred many museums to shift their emphasis fromobjects to experiences, and from Western hegemonic culture to multicultural special interests.The museum is still a storehouse for the best artifacts history and culture have to offer, but it isnow also a place to feel and explore new things – or old things from a different point of view.However, the entertainment media’s representation of collecting constructs a verydifferent picture of what it is and who engages in it than the reality of the practice. The mostcommon figuration of a collector is of a socially inept male loner who uses the assembled objectsas a substitute for human interaction. In live-action film, Silence of the Lambs’ (JonathanDemme, 1991) Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb (Ted Levine) is a serial killer who collects newspaperclippings about his crimes and body parts from his victims. In Everything is Illuminated (LievSchreiber, 2005), Jonathan Safran Foer (Elijah Wood) is an awkward tourist and socially inepttwenty-something virgin who collects seemingly worthless objects. In Toy Story 2 (John Lasseterand Ash Brannon, 1999) the obsessive toy collector Al McWiggin is devious and ruthless in hisattempts to obtain a complete set of Woody’s Roundup toys. This handful of examples representsa strong trend in film and animation to portray the collector as eccentric, megalomaniacal, oreven dangerous. But Pearce’s study makes clear that the anti-social male bachelor collector is theexception rather than the rule. In fact, collectors are more often female than male (of those11

surveyed and self-identifying as a collector, forty-two percent are male and fifty-eight percentfemale) and frequently well-integrated into other aspects of society. The information aboutfamily and employment situations indicates that:collectors are living personal lives which do not differ from those of noncollectors, and which are ‘normal’ in terms of human sexual and familiarrelationships The point is an extremely important one, because the stereotype ofthe collector is of a dispirited, anorak-clad loner who is un

IMMATERIAL MATERIALITY: COLLECTING IN LIVE-ACTION FILM, ANIMATION, AND DIGITAL GAMES Kara Lynn Andersen, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2009 This dissertation analyzes depictions of collecting and collectors in visual media, arguing that cultural conceptions which have long been reinforced by live-action film and animation are now