Cinema Panopticum, by Thomas Ott: images, terror and social control

Abstract

It proposes a critical analysis of the graphic novel Cinema Panotpticum (2021), by Thomas Ott. In the narrative, a girl goes to an amusement park where she watches short films in kinetoscope booths (an image projection device invented in 1894). By the girl's eyes, the reader follows macabre and cruel stories in the films. Initially, the reflection focuses here on the concept of panopticon, studied by Michel Foucault (2014), to establish a relationship between the universe of images and social control. Next, we seek to clarify, with support from cinema theories, Thomas Ott's creative dialogue with German expressionist cinema and its atmosphere of terror; finally, it is demonstrated how the author recovers something of the fascination and fear of the first spectators in the face of cinematic images.