Matters of Gravity: Special Effects
and Supermen in the 20th Century
by Scott Bukatman
Duke UP, Durham, NC, 2003
296 pp., illus. 38 b/w, 17col. Trade, $74.95; paper, $21.95
ISBN: 0-8223-3132-2; ISBN: 0-8223-3119-5.
Reviewed by Dene Grigar
Texas Woman’s University
dgrigar@twu.edu
The title, Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in
the 20th Century, belies the contents of Scott Bukatman’s
collection of essays, for it suggests, at first glance, a critique
of the kinds of techniques used in cinema to render the superhero
weightless and barreling missile-like through space. The book, however,
is a compilation of articles previously published by the author, some
as far back as 1991, that "concentrates on the experience of technological
spectacle popular in American culture" (2) and a continuation of Bukatman’s
earlier work Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in PostModern
Science Fiction published in 1993 by the same press. The scope
of Bukatman’s examination this go-around is more vast and eclectic
than the previous outing: Disney theme parks, science fiction literature
and film, New York musicals, panoramas, superhero comics, the typewriter,
mutant superheroes, mass transportation, the sublime, urban landscapes,
bodybuilding, and cyberspace are but a few of the subjects he prods
and probes. In the end the reader finds the information reeling about
the brain like the kaleidoscope he writes about––an
experience that can be called heady and an effect no less than dizzying.
The eight essays are organized around three sections. The first section,
"Remembering Cyberspace," pertains to articles written in the early
nineties that somehow relate, sometimes rather loosely, to computer
environments. For the first and second essays the placement in the
section makes sense. In "There’s Always Tomorrowland" he parallels
Disneyland and Disney World with science fiction literature and film,
particularly with the genre of cyberpunk, to make a point about the
human desire to control chaos of the real world, and in "Gibson’s
Typewriter" he argues that the "disembodied informational cyberspaces"
found in William Gibsons’s Neuromancer are anticipated
by the "obsolescent" rhetorics and technologies of . . . ‘machine
culture’" (34). The third essay, however, seems less obvious
a match. A discussion about mutant superheroes and the way they "embody
. . . ambivalent and shifting attitudes toward flesh, self, and society"
(51) seems far off the topic of cyberspace.
As one would expect from essays written so far apart and originally
for such different venues––some academic, some not––the
language is inconsistent. Essay one is written in dense, postmodern
prose, while essay two possesses a more approachable style. Essay
three reads like it is intended for the adolescent boys whose comics
he critiques––peppered with slang, like "dick" and "big-titted,"
and idioms like "jack in" (48).
But the fact remains, Bukatman can, indeed, write, and he can turn
a phrase like no one else. We see these talents readily in section
two, "Kaleidoscopic Perceptions," which contains one of the most elegant
of his eight essays–– "The Artificial Infinite." There he
explores the relationship between technology and the sublime, specifically
in the way they play out in the special effects found in science fiction
film. He writes: "The genres of science fiction often exhibits its
spectatorial excess in the form of the special effect, which is especially
effective at bringing the narrative to a spectacular halt" (90). Such
classical schemes of construction as this use of antimetabole can
be found throughout the book. It is particularly effective, however,
in an essay about the sublime.
The final section contains more recent essays, written beginning 1998.
Of these, the third, "The Boys in the Hoods," satisfies the most because
it is the one that best addresses the book’s premise: "Superhero
comics present something other than . . . aggressive fantasies of
authority and control; something more closely aligned with fantasy
and color but at the same time specific to the urban settings that
pervade the genre" (186). In fact, it is the essay the reader has
been waiting for.
To weave these disparate essays and styles more closely together Bukatman
could had provided some sort of commentary at the end of the book,
but he concludes rather with a disconclusion––a "To
be continued . . . " notation. One would not expect anything less
from a postmodern critique of popular culture except that at the start
of the book he had heralded his rationale and methodology in a traditional
"Introduction." It would not have been any less hip to provide some
encapsulating analysis for his audience at the end of the book.
All in all, Bukatman’s work remains compelling and heady, despite
the dizzying array of subject matter––and the few inconsistencies––outlined
here.
