3-D Cinema and Trauma

This book examines 3D cinema across the early 1950s, the early 1980s, and from 2009 to 2014, providing for the first time not only a connection between 3D cinema and historical trauma but also a consideration of 3D aesthetics from a cultural perspective. The main argument of the book is that 3D cinema possesses a privileged potential to engage with trauma. Exploring questions of representation, embodiment and temporality in 3-D cinema, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach, offering a compelling analysis to a combination of box office favorites and more obscure films, ranging across genres such as horror, erotica, fantasy, science fiction, and documentaries. Weaving theoretical discussions and film analysis this book renders complex theoretical frameworks such as Deleuze and trauma theory accessible.

“In this erudite book, Dor Fadlon develops a most compelling account of 3D cinema as telling of transformations in cultural trauma in America from the Cold War to the War on Terror — and from analog to digital. Fadlon adds here a crucial, perviously missing, dimension (literally!) in understanding the social life trauma as technologically mediated. This book will prove valuable to those interested in critically analyzing the intersections of film studies and trauma studies.” (Amit Pinchevski, Professor of Communication, Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Author of Transmitted Wounds: Media and the Mediation of Trauma)

“This rigorously researched and thought-provoking text brings an entirely new lens to our understanding of 3D cinema’s history. By deftly weaving together theories of trauma, phenomenology and the distinct aesthetics of the medium, Fadlon has expertly laid out the complex ways in which 3D cinema speaks to its audiences. The interlinking of 3D cinema with its surrounding socio-cultural contexts allows a nuanced understanding of the medium that lays to rest public and scholarly tendencies to diminish 3D cinema as simply a profit- oriented gimmick. This book contains significant coverage of the contexts in which 3D cinema operates and the scholarly theories necessary to understand its impacts, all supported by rich textual analysis to illustrate its points. With close attention to some of the best-known 3D films and lesser known but equally significant works, this book provides a range of thoughtful insights into the ways that 3D cinema has caught the public imagination and channelled underlying societal currents into a unique visual experience.” (Miriam Ross, Independent Scholar. Author of 3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences)
“Dor Fadlon's observation that there is a clear relationship between the popularity of 3D cinema and traumatic events in recent American history is so simple and yet so profound that it begs the envious question: why did we not all see earlier what was jutting out of the cinema screen and staring us directly in the face? Luckily for us, though, Fadlon has not only made precisely this link, but he has made it in a meticulous, detailed and engaging fashion. 3-D Cinema and Trauma: Poetics of Remembrance and Loss adds great depth to the scholarship on stereoscopic cinema, progressing beyond attack or defence of the form (or medium), and instead articulating in a fascinating and astute fashion what it is that 3D cinema is actually doing - formally as well as in terms of the stories that it tells. This is a provocative book that will generate further debates - not least because 3D would seem on the verge of yet another so-called comeback, which of course coincides with the collective trauma of a global pandemic. A crucial and critical addition to the field.” (William Brown, Associate Professor of Film, University of British Columbia. Author of Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age)



“The shifting fortunes of 3D cinema have elicited a considerable body of scholarly analysis, and Dor Fadlon opens up new vistas for the subdiscipline with this innovative study of the 3D format’s intersections with trauma as both a psychological phenomenon and a complex of issues relating to cinema, narrativity, and modes of vision and representation. Casting a wide historical and theoretical net, Fadlon examines the classical 3D epoch of the 1950s, the wave of digital 3D that followed in the 2000s, and the divergent approaches of stereoscopic documentary, pornography, and horror in the 1980s. Probing the B-movie intricacies of It Came from Outer Space and House of Wax in the first section, the more sophisticated workings of Life of Pi and Gravity in the second, and the variegated attractions of the nonfiction Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the transgressive Love, and the exploitational Jaws 3D in the third, to mention only some of the films analyzed in these pages, Fadlon employs conceptual frames derived from Marx, Freud, Benjamin, Deleuze, Sobchack, Buckland, and many others to support his arguments and solidify his conclusions, which illuminate areas of cinema that are as important as they are understudied in the existing literature. Combining academic rigor with clear and vigorous language, Fadlon’s study should be welcomed by cinephiles and trauma scholars alike.” (David Sterritt, editor-in-chief, Quarterly Review of Film and Video) 

Dor Fadlon is a researcher and filmmaker exploring the intersections of cinema, technology, and culture. He holds a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington and was a Golda Meir Postdoctoral Fellow in the Noah Mozes Department of Communication and Journalism, Hebrew University Of Jerusalem. Currently Dor is a lecturer at Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University, where he offers courses on film and visual culture, including violence on screen, film and technology and 3D Cinema.