{"id":51,"date":"2012-07-20T15:20:33","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T22:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/?p=51"},"modified":"2013-04-12T07:56:22","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T14:56:22","slug":"tears-arent-really-water-connie-willis-novel-remake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/?p=51","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTears aren\u2019t really water\u201d: Simulating sorrow in Connie Willis\u2019 novel Remake<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/em>Extrapolating from the current intersection of Hollywood\u2019s aversion to risk and its reliance on computer-generated effects, the future-fiction novel Remake<\/em> (1995) dramatizes a film industry in which new live-action films are exclusively CGI-generated pastiches of old movies. Want to put yourself in a film and then change the ending? Just visit a video booth at Hollywood and Highland, and you can be the Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca<\/em> who ditches Claude Raines and strolls into the mist with Ingrid Bergman instead. Such cinema revisionism\u2014by fans and studios alike\u2014is a juicy conceit, which Remake, <\/em>at a brisk 176 pages, only begins to extract.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Tom, the novel\u2019s protagonist, re-edits old films for a living, removing their references to \u201cAS\u2019s\u201d\u2014addictive substances, such as alcohol and cigarettes\u2014a task reminiscent of Steven Spielberg\u2019s gun\/walkie-talkie swap in the DVD release of E.T.<\/em> Rather than recapitulate the plot of Remake<\/em>, I want to examine a scene in which Tom goes to an industry party and runs into a computer graphics tech named Vincent, who is demonstrating his latest breakthrough: a \u201cweeper simulator\u201d that digitally applies tears to any actor.<\/p>\n

As Vincent explains, \u201cTears are the most difficult form of water simulation to do\u2026. It\u2019s because tears aren\u2019t really water. They\u2019ve got mucoproteins and lysozymes and a high salt content. It affects the index of refraction and makes them hard to reproduce.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Tom watches a split-screen demo of various scenes comparing two forms of simulated crying: tears produced in front of the camera, and those generated by computer computations. Watching the famous Bogey-Bergman airport scene in Casablanca, <\/em>Tom contemplates: \u201cI looked at the screen. There were tears welling up in Ingrid\u2019s eyes, glimmering like the real thing. They probably weren\u2019t. It was probably the eighth take, or the eighteenth, and a makeup girl had come out with glycerine drops or onion juice to get the right effect. It wasn\u2019t the tears that did it anyway. It was the face, that sweet, sad face that knew it could never have what it wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The observation resonates with a personal pet-peeve: technical verisimilitude is rarely the crucial value of aesthetic experience\u2014contrary to relentless marketing in cinema, TV, and video games celebrating the latest advances in CGI, 3D, or physics engines. The unrealistic language attached to the industrial drive toward photorealism (\u201c\u2026 My girlfriend won\u2019t stop watching because she thinks it\u2019s a movie,\u201d as one regrettable PS3 ad<\/a> boasted of Uncharted 2<\/em>) is perhaps inevitable, but perhaps consumers\u2014at least episodically\u2014can see past these efforts in techno-utopian misdirection.<\/p>\n

This is not to take a paradoxically Luddite position within new media studies. Technical prowess gives us new material from which to fashion convincing (even profound) narrative and ludic experiences of laughter and tears. But as Remake<\/em> reminds us, the most compelling simulations of sorrow aren\u2019t really about water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Extrapolating from the current intersection of Hollywood\u2019s aversion to risk and its reliance on computer-generated effects, the future-fiction novel Remake (1995) dramatizes a film industry in which new live-action films are exclusively CGI-generated pastiches of old movies. Want to put … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erraticplay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}