Oor nostalgie (en retro-estetika): die ikonografie van Beyond the black rainbow en Ready player one

On nostalgia (and retro-aesthetics): the iconography of Beyond the black rainbow and Ready player oneIn this second of two articles, one film each by directors Panos Cosmatos and Steven Spielberg will be analysed and compared in order to examine the different ways in which filmic iconography is used visually and narratively to represent nostalgia and/or retro-aesthetics.The theoretical frame of reference that will be adopted for this comparison relates to the discussion and analysis of the different aspects of nostalgia, its interrelatedness with retro-aesthetics, and the different ways in which filmic iconography relates both to mediated content and stylistic devices, as all of these were discussed extensively in part one.The working definition of Sabine Sielke, that identifies "nostalgia as an affective mode of perception that aligns imagined timespaces, mediated in retro aesthetics, with processes of commodification", and the notion that all nostalgia is retro, but not all retro is nostalgic, remain central tenets of the argument to be presented here.In a number of interviews Panos Cosmatos has expressed his views on nostalgia, with specific reference to the meaning it has for the films he has made.His reference to "poisoned nostalgia" already indicates an ambivalent attitude towards nostalgia, in that its dangers are admitted in the wake of a self-reflective engagement with the past and its cultural artefacts.His debut film, Beyond the black rainbow, is considered by many commentators to have attempted a nostalgic reproduction or reimagining of a specific type of film from the late 1970s and 1980s.In the analysis of Beyond the black rainbow the attempt will be made to demonstrate how Cosmatos uses iconography not to replicate films from the past in order to evoke a nostalgic affect from the viewer, but rather to use stylistic conventions as retro-aesthetic effects in order to elicit a more cerebral approach towards both the (filmic) tradition and the past, and its potential nostalgic effects.It is indicated that the use of iconography in Beyond the black rainbow relates mostly to the application of stylistic and narrative conventions, and less to the use of content (as the latter was interpreted by Erwin Panofsky (1972)).Cosmatos's film has many allusions to cult films from the 1980s, as is confirmed by the director himself in a number of interviews.The references in his film are mainly to cinematographic elements pertaining to the use of film grain, lens flares, colours, etc., but he also makes use of a number of conventional narrative structures typical of the films from this era.The caveat is, however, that the juxtaposition of many of these narrative conventions has a jarring effect, as if cohesion in the development of the linear plot is lacking.The result is the presence of many allusions and references that in the first instance might seem to be attempts at a nostalgic revisitation, but because of their singularly alienating effect, do not necessarily evoke the presumed nostalgic affects, but rather prompt reflection on the nature of their use.A notion of self-reflection follows in its wake, and it is especially the implied self-reflection of the viewer watching the film that becomes one of the most important motifs of the visual text.The visual focus on eyes, the doubling of images, dialogue referring to characters being watched, characters watching a variety of screens, etc. foreground the relation of the viewer to the viewed object through the mediation of the latter -and by implication also the viewer and his or her relation as spectator to Cosmatos's film.The work of Vera Dika is used here to interpret the effects that this distancing relation (because self-awareness-and self-reflection-inducing) entail