"An Experience of the Impossible": The Planetary Imagination in Goerges Melies's A Trip to the Moon
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Authors
Laist, Randy
Issue Date
2024-04-05
Type
Other
Language
en_US
Keywords
Georges Méliès, A Trip to the Moon, planetarity, planetary imagination, early cinema
Alternative Title
Abstract
In Georges Melies's masterpiece, A Trip to the Moon, one of the first spectacles that the astronomer-adventurers encounter is the image of Earth rising above the horizon. The scene in Melies's 1902 fantasy film is an uncanny foreshadow of two of the most famous photographs in human history, Earthrise and Blue Marble. Indeed, the illusion of this impossible anachronism may rank as the most astonishing magic trick in A Trip to the Moon. The image of Earth from space evokes the critical question of what it means to consider human existence on a planetary scale, a question that began to take a newly urgent form in Melies's time and that continues to haunt modern audiences. Gayatri Chakrovarty Spivak
(2003) argues that planetarity constitutes "an experience of the impossible." In a "Special Topics" film class, UB students examined Melies's film for insights about what Lisa Messeri (2016) calls "The
planetary imagination."
Description
UB Rise 2024, English Department, College of Science and Society, University of Bridgeport