Abstract
In this paper I present and discuss the relationship between the technological sublime, panoramic realism and American identity, as represented in some of the most remarkable space films produced by IMAX: Hail Columbia (1982), The Dream Is Alive (1985) and Destiny in Space (1994). While continuing the U.S. science documentary traditions of visualizing space-related concepts, the productions depict the missions of NASA’s Space Shuttle programme and its memorable moments, such as the first launch of Discovery or the crews’ stay on the shuttle. Their form, best exemplified by the late 1970s and 1980s space science documentaries, relied on a stunningly realist format and a mediated experience of the astronomical as well as technological and dynamic sublime, largely present in the U.S. and global space imagery. Particularly the latter concept, as developed by Marx (1964), Kasson (1976) or Nye (1994), is defined as a distinctively American formation and “an essentially religious feeling,” which has become “self-justifying parts of a national destiny, just as the natural sublime once undergirded the rhetoric of manifest destiny” (Nye, 1994, pp. 13, 282). Simultaneously, however, whilst imbued with some typically American space-related values and conventions, including the frontier myth or White’s Overview Effect, the IMAX films tend to perpetuate an intrinsically transnational and multicultural image of spaceflight through demythisizing the concept of American transcendental state centered around the idea of exceptionalism and destiny in space (Sage, 2014).
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Notes
- 1.
The latter citation originally comes from “A General Statement of Conditions and Proposed Letter of Agreement,” SIA, Record Unit 338, Box 23, Dream Is Alive file.
- 2.
A distinctively American tradition of depicting sublime qualities of grand and largely uncivilized natural scenery goes back to the 19th century Hudson River School movement. Some official landscape painters, including Thomas Moran, Frederick Church or Alfred Bierstadt, are all credited with creating vast canvas depicting yet undiscovered territories of the Niagara Falls, Yellowstone or Yosemite and thus familiarizing the American public with the magnificent views they were unable to eyewitness. The artists’ practices were mostly in accordance with the main principles of American romanticism, which gave rise to the nationwide appreciation of deistic wilderness recognized as one of the principal constituents of national self-esteem (Nash, 1982, pp. 67–68). Therefore, among the most prominent characteristics of the movement was its preoccupation with the notion of romantic landscape, which stands in opposition to scientific empiricism and secularism of Western Europe and attempts to rediscover the presence of God and spirituality in nature. The two principal strands, which evolved in the course of the school’s development, are pastoral elegiac and scientific exoticism, also inseparably connected with visualizing the sublime and the picturesque (Allen, 1992, p. 27). The depiction of the former aesthetic concept would often involve elements later identified with Romanticism, whose aim was to evoke the feelings of uncertainty, fear, horror and terror brought about by visualizing conditions, such as vastness and infinity, darkness and danger or solitude and pain. These and similarly boundless, horrifying or violent qualities of nature tend to agreeably terrorize the beholder and render them fearful, helpless, yet at the same time astonished and highly inspired by the power of nature (Arensberg, 1986, pp. 3–4).
- 3.
Originally formulated by Turner in his 1893 paper, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” delivered to the American Historical Association in Chicago, the frontier thesis postulated that a distinctive character of American national identity and democracy was shaped by the frontier experience. The process of westward expansion had a considerable impact on the pioneers and settles whose personal qualities, including individualism, egalitarianism, determination, strength, independence, innovation, pragmatism, resourcefulness or inclination to use violence, evolved in the course of discovering and taming largely unknown and unexplored lands. Turner also elaborated on the U.S. frontier tradition as one of the most important factors which helped establish a new form of liberty distinct from the European, old, eroding and often dysfunctional socio-political system, and traced the birth of American democracy and institutions to social and economic conditions provided by frontier life of early pioneers. Predominantly, however, Turner’s thesis is seen as an evolutionary model accounting for the impact of geographical space of the U.S. uncultivated and vast land on some unique characteristics of the American national identity formed precisely at the juncture between the uncivilized, savage wilderness and the civilized human settlements: “[T]he frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civilization” (Turner, 1893, p. 3).
- 4.
Originally coined by John O’Sullivan in 1845 to denote and advocate the U.S. annexation of Texas and the Oregon Country, the concept of manifest destiny refers to the nationwide ideology, which implied that American settlers were destined to explore and expand across the Western and North American territories. As proposed by historians (see e.g. Hietala, 1985; Merk and Merk, 1963; Tuveson, 1980; Weeks, 1996; Weinberg, 1935), the three basic themes pertaining to the idea are as follows: “(1) The special virtues of the American people and their institutions; (2) America’s mission to redeem and remake the world in the image of America; and, (3) A divine destiny under God’s direction to accomplish this wonderful task” (Miller, 2006, p. 120). Some of the chief social, political and cultural principles and movements underlying manifest destiny included American exceptionalism, Romantic nationalism, Turner’s frontier thesis and Jacksonian democracy. Later, the phrase became associated with the U.S. territorial expansion between 1812 and 1860, also known as “the age of manifest destiny,” during which the American nation succeeded to expand to the Pacific Ocean and thus largely define the present-day borders of the contiguous United States.
- 5.
The term New Age, often defined as a form of Western esotericism, denotes a broad cultural, philosophical and religious movement, which developed in Western nations in the 1960s and 1970s. Its practitioners held the belief in the coming of the Age of Aquarius, connoting either the present-day or upcoming astrological era that marked the beginning of a new spiritual awareness and collective consciousness (New Age, 2016).
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Boczkowska, K. (2017). Spaceflight as the (Trans)National Spectacle: Transforming Technological Sublime and Panoramic Realism in Early IMAX Space Films. In: Mydla, J., Poks, M., Drong, L. (eds) Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self: Literature and Culture Studies. Second Language Learning and Teaching(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61049-8_10
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