Stardust
Cinematic Archives at the End of the World
Tracing the many aesthetic, philosophical, and technological parallels between cinema and astronomy, Hannah Goodwin demonstrates how filmmakers use cosmic imagery and themes to respond to the twentieth century’s moments of existential dread. As our outlook on the future continues to change, Stardust illuminates the promise of cinema to bear witness to humanity’s fragile existence within the vast expanse of the universe.
The advent of cinema occurred alongside pivotal developments in astronomy and astrophysics, including Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity, all of which dramatically altered our conception of time and provided new means of envisioning the limits of our world. Tracing the many aesthetic, philosophical, and technological parallels between these fields, Stardust explores how cinema has routinely looked toward the cosmos to reflect our collective anxiety about a universe without us.
Employing a “cosmocinematic gaze,” Hannah Goodwin uses metaphorical frameworks from astronomy to posit new understandings of cinematic time and underscore the role of light in generating archives for an uncertain future. Surveying a broad range of films, including silent-era educational movies, avant-garde experimental works, and contemporary blockbusters, she carves out a distinctive area of film analysis that extends its reach far beyond mainstream science fiction to explore films that reckon with a future in which humans are absent.
This expansive study details the shared affinities between cinema and the stars in order to demonstrate how filmmakers use cosmic imagery and themes to respond to the twentieth century’s moments of existential dread, from World War I to the atomic age to our current moment of environmental collapse. As our outlook on the future continues to change, Stardust illuminates the promise of cinema to bear witness to humanity’s fragile existence within the vast expanse of the universe.
Contents
Introduction: Filming a Precarious Universe
1. Lights All Askew: Relativity and New Astronomy on Film
2. New Constellations: Aerial Cinema in the Second World War
3. Destroyer of Worlds: Cinema of Atomic Experimentation
Epilogue: Witnessing after the End
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
