Humanities Honors Program

This thesis examines how New Media, especially social media, has influenced contemporary cinematic aesthetics and narrative form in film and television. Through close analysis of three primary case studies—Bo Burnham: Inside, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and the ScreenLife film Searching, alongside a discussion of Beast Games and War of the Worlds as negative comparative examples—the project demonstrates the increasing ubiquity of New Media aesthetics in film and television.  It first shows how social media’s visual language of authenticity and intimacy has reshaped performance-based media, particularly in comedy specials and reality television. It then analyzes how rapid-cut, highly stylized “retention editing” can be transformed into narratively meaningful hypermediacy. Finally, it considers ScreenLife films and their utilization of a digital mise-en-scène, examining how it can deepen intimacy and characterization, whilst also revealing the limits of the format when authenticity or narrative motivation breaks down. Taken together, these examples show that not only is film actively absorbing, adapting, and sometimes subverting the aesthetics of popular New Media platforms, but that recognition of this fact opens the door to further conversation about the value and use cases of these new aesthetic tools.