Cinematic Enwaterment. Drowning bodies in the contemporary film experience

Over the last twenty-five years, as the actor’s physical body has gradually disappeared from the cinematic screen, the bodily dimension of the film experience has increased. In a scenario in which cinema has spread to a myriad of monitors and displays and the film experience seems to lose its integrity, the spectator is still seeking a strong and involving experience, still demanding stories made up of images and sounds that can still arouse the senses. My hypothesis is that contemporary cinema is facing this mutation by developing a number of specific and recurrent “experiential figures”. These figures are cases of strong and effective bodily tension, in which spectators’ motor, perceptual, emotional and mental activities are embodied into a “sensible substance”. Such a substance extends its features from the screen to the psychological space of the experience and transforms it into a unique “sensible environment”. One of these figure is the body in the water. Since its beginnings, cinema has recognized that water can visually give matter and meaning to human desires, dreams and secrets, eliciting suspense and fear. Using different aesthetical and technical strategies, contemporary cinema shows immersed and drowning bodies to represent and express intimacy and protection, suspense and fear, obsession and depression, state of shock, past or infancy trauma, hallucinations and nightmares, etc. The case of “water-embodiment” (or enwaterment) is significant because of its relevance to the point where psychoanalysis and philosophy meet. In this provisional paper, presented at the International Film Studies Conference “Emergent Encounters in Film Theory. Intersections Between Psychoanalysis and Philosophy”, held at King’s College of London on March 21st 2009, I attempt to investigate what is actually meant today by making a bodily and sensible experience of film by analyzing the substance of water and the figures of the drowning and immersed body. Cinema embodies aquatic modalities of perception and expression, pulling the viewer into a liquid environment that is the confluence between the film-body and the filmgoer-body.

Negli ultimi venticinque anni, alla progressiva scomparsa del corpo fisico dell’attore dallo schermo cinematografico corrisponde una crescente corporalizzazione dell’esperienza filmica. In uno scenario in cui il cinema si sta diffondendo su una moltitudine di monitor e display e l’esperienza filmica sembra aver perso la propria integrità, lo spettatore è ancora alla ricerca di emozioni forti ed esperienze coinvolgenti, storie forgiate nelle immagini e nei suoni che sappiano ancora stimolare e stupire i sensi. L’ipotesi di questo saggio è che, per far fronte a queste mutazioni e a queste necessità, il cinema americano contemporaneo di successo stia sviluppando una serie di specifiche e ricorrenti “figure esperienziali”, ovvero casi di forte tensione corporea in cui l’attività motoria, percettiva, emotiva e mentale dello spettatore sono incorporate in una “sostanza sensibile”. Lo spettatore viene integrato in un unico ambiente sensibile ed empaticamente agisce e interagisce con gli oggetti e i soggetti filmici. Fra le più efficaci figure esperienziali vi è il corpo immerso o l’annegamento in acqua. Da sempre infatti il cinema ha usato l’acqua per rappresentare desideri, sogni e segreti, intimità e protezione, ossessione e depressione, shock e traumi, allucinazioni e incubi, o per suscitare suspense e paura…