Deleuze's Three Syntheses Go to Hollywood: The Tripartite Cinema of Time Travel, Many Worlds and Altered States
D. Deamer
Film-Philosophy September 27, 2019 DOI: 10.3366/film.2019.0119 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that 'time travel' cinema is one of three interweaving modes of disjunctive narration, alongside a cinema of 'many worlds' and 'altered states,' and that Deleuze's three syntheses from Difference and Repetition can conceptually develop these series through the Planet of the Apes, The Terminator, and Back to the Future film cycles, ungrounding everyday spatio-temporal identities and affirming productive images of cinematic thought. |
Abstract
What is called “time travel” cinema is but one aspect in a tripartite series of interweaving modes of disjunctive narration which is also – simultaneously – a cinema of “many worlds” and “altered states”. Exploiting Gilles Deleuze's three syntheses of time, space, and consciousness from Difference and Repetition (1968) allows a conceptual development of these cinematic series through three popular Hollywood film cycles beginning with Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968), The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984), and Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985). In so doing, film and philosophy are deployed as two series which together create inexhaustible atemporal, aspatial, and ahuman disjunctions, ungrounding everyday spatio-temporal identities, and affirming productive images of cinematic thought.