Dark media

Dark media are a type of media outlined by American philosopher Eugene Thacker.

The VHS cassette in the Japanese horror film Ring is an example of a dark medium.

Overview

Discussed at length in the essay of the same name, Eugene Thacker writes that dark media are media that function too well.[1] Thacker writes that, "dark media have, as their aim, the mediation of that which is unavailable or inaccessible to the senses, and thus that which we are normally "in the dark" about."[2] Typically in works of Horror, dark media are relatively commonplace media that show more of the world than is expected, with the dark medium showing what lies beyond the possibility of human sense. Dark media are significant in their ability to breach the, typically unbridgeable, gap between objects being mediated.[3] With dark media, as shown in the J-Horror film Ring, dark media can create a point between the natural and the supernatural.[4] In Ring, the dark medium of the VHS cassette makes it possible for antagonist Sadako Yamamura to cross the threshold of a tv, and subsequently kill those that have viewed the videotape.

Examples of dark media

References
  1. Thacker, Eugene (2013). Excommunication. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 92.
  2. Thacker, Eugene (2013). Excommunication. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 85.
  3. Thacker, Eugene (2013). Excommunication. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 84.
  4. Thacker, Eugene (2013). Excommunication. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 92.
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