ABSTRACT
This chapter explores fears and fantasies regarding the role of the digital in shaping subjective and phenomenological spaces by analysing cinema's projection of composite material/digital game spaces. The chapter focuses on two films: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Wright, 2010), a fantastical comedy about a young man who must defeat his new love interest's seven evil ex-partners in a series of arcade game-like showdowns and mobile gaming thriller Nerve (Joost & Schulman, 2016). Both films utilise images to mirror and simulate other senses, such as touch, to present environments that conflate material, lived space, and graphical game space. The chapter argues that the films exemplify contradictory attitudes towards digital extensions and multiplications of the body. In Scott Pilgrim, the virtual elements of the film aid Scott and he physically wields graphics as weapons. Conversely, Nerve depicts a character who willingly offers her body as voyeuristic object for a group of “watchers”. The chapter juxtaposes Nerve's utilisation of graphics to depict a voyeuristic self-recording game to 2009s Gamer (Neveldine & Taylor, 2009)—which addresses vicarious experience through the metaphor of human avatars—illustrating shifts in representations of the body within game space.
