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ABSTRACT
This essay revisits the theoretical framework of Tom Gunning’s account of cine-genres to delineate an approach to genre suited to domains of inquiry related to, yet distinct from, film studies. It considers how Gunning’s emphasis on non-continuity allows for genre analysis based on form of expression and energetic transformations, instead of limiting it to content, structure, and economic rationality. Gunning’s shift in emphasis also allows for consideration of another domain in which non-continuity is often dismissed as an anomaly: transmedia series. The essay turns to ‘original video animation’ or OVA of 1980s Japan to explore the implications of Gunning’s ‘multilinear’ machine of non-continuity for thinking transmedia-genre.
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Thomas Lamarre
Thomas Lamarre teaches in the departments of Cinema and Media Studies and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Publications on media, thought, and material history include work on communication networks in 9th century Japan (Uncovering Heian Japan, 2000); silent cinema and the global imaginary (Shadows on the Screen, 2005); animation technologies (The Anime Machine, 2009); and infrastructure ecologies (The Anime Ecology, 2018).