Dying in Full Detail: Mortality and Digital Documentary - Hardcover

Malkowski, Jennifer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822363003 ISBN 13: 9780822363002

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2017

Synopsis

In Dying in Full Detail Jennifer Malkowski explores digital media's impact on one of documentary film's greatest taboos: the recording of death. Despite technological advances that allow for the easy creation and distribution of death footage, digital media often fail to live up to their promise to reveal the world in greater fidelity. Malkowski analyzes a wide range of death footage, from feature films about the terminally ill (Dying, Silverlake Life, Sick), to surreptitiously recorded suicides (The Bridge), to #BlackLivesMatter YouTube videos and their precursors. Contextualizing these recordings in the long history of attempts to capture the moment of death in American culture, Malkowski shows how digital media are unable to deliver death "in full detail," as its metaphysical truth remains beyond representation. Digital technology's capacity to record death does, however, provide the opportunity to politicize individual deaths through their representation. Exploring the relationships among technology, temporality, and the ethical and aesthetic debates about capturing death on video, Malkowski illuminates the key roles documentary death has played in twenty-first-century visual culture.

About this title

Review

"Well written, with a good message on the tabooed topic, this book is a good dare-to reading for everyone being arrested or rejected by everyday mediated images of death."--Ana Peraica"Leonardo" (09/05/2017)

"By intervening as she does, Malkowski not only provides readers with insight into the long-standing visual pursuits of documentary with regard to death, but also with important methodological concerns that are applicable to a number of other contexts. As digital platforms continue to evolve and provoke new apprehensions, one's understanding of such phenomena as murders streamed over Facebook Live will be vastly enriched by the work that Dying in Full Detail so adroitly performs."-- (09/01/2017)

"Of the many strengths of Dying in Full Detail, perhaps the greatest is Malkowski's compassion and care in handling such extremely personal and sensitive material. . . . Her work is culturally sensitive and critically engaging, as well as clearly written and academically thorough."-- (04/01/2018)

"I really value Malkowski's willingness to unflinchingly critique the intersection of death and media and question if and how these various media might better serve political activism against injustice. . . . Her book emphasizes the irony that while some might fetishize death through spectacle and digital recordings, recorded death can also function as visual and ethical rhetoric against repressive regimes and hegemonic forces. I think this is her most significant contribution and reason to read this important book."-- (12/01/2018)

About the Author

Jennifer Malkowski is Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Smith College.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0822363003
• ISBN 13: 9780822363002
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 264