Tillie Quattrone

Tillie Quattrone

Email: tillie.quattrone@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

Thesis Title

Digital Ages: Exploring the Industrial, Formal, and Theoretic Implications of Hollywood’s Digital De-ageing Trend

Institution

The University of Manchester

Supervisors

Dr. MaoHui Deng
Dr. Victoria Lowe

Research Summary

This project examines digital de-ageing’s effect on film form, industry, and theory. More specifically, it examines the role of de-ageing in ongoing discussions of the digital’s effect on cinema’s material legacies, taking an opportunity to examine this technology’s relation to the elitism and nostalgia that have become entangled with the desire to preserve white, male, material cinematic tradition. This research also examines questions surrounding the ethics of digitally manipulating stars’ bodies within a profit-driven industry. These questions, as they pertain here, concern the ethical implications of who are digitally de-aged and how, as well as who this practice excludes. It finally studies this trend’s relationship to structures of labour and narrative within the franchises and genres that consistently contribute to it (e.g., Marvel, action and fantasy). By addressing these concerns, this project aims to formulate new frameworks that will constitute a step towards comprehensive address of digital de-ageing’s wider sociocultural implications.

Research Interests

Screen culture in the digital age,
on-screen representations of marginalised bodies and
stardom.

Publications

Quattrone, T. (2023) “You know how the game goes, baby”: Exploring Intersections of Power in Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. In: Film Matters, 14(1), pp 37-49. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1386/fm_00258_1.

 

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