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En prenant comme point de départ l'interprétation de l'épopée homérique par Erich Auerbach, ce mémoire se consacre à la notion d'immersion fictionnelle, non sous son versant psychologique de phénomène contingent de la conscience imageante, mais sous son versant imaginaire, en tant que mythe sociétal d'immédiateté déterminant des stratégies esthétiques et médiatiques concrètes, que j'articule autour des poétiques contemporaines de construction de mondes (world building). L'enjeu est de saisir les répercussions esthétiques de ce fantasme d'une représentation qui occulterait à la fois sa médiateté et le réel-sensible, à une époque où la transfictionnalité et la transmédiaticité s'élèvent tranquillement comme modes narratifs dominants de notre culture occidentale contemporaine. Avec cette conviction que le terme d'immersion doit être replacé dans le cadre de ses effets, le premier chapitre s'affairera à démêler quelques difficultés théoriques que pose la notion en la problématisant sous l'égide des questions ontologiques de vérité et de la position phénoménologique de Sartre sur l'imaginaire. Tout en posant les outils théoriques nécessaires aux analyses subséquentes, le deuxième chapitre approfondit cette problématisation en empruntant aux théories modales des mondes possibles un cadre conceptuel opératoire, qui amènera, notamment grâce au concept formalisé de «~monde~», à concevoir la fiction comme un mouvement de distanciation. Appuyé par la lecture du roman tolkienien, le troisième chapitre tourne le fantasme d'immersion du côté d'une pulsion encyclopédique de complétude, concrétisée par des stratégies textuelles d'accumulation informationnelle et de virtualisation de données diégétiques laissées en suspens -- effets d'actualité que je qualifie d'extra-narratifs en les présentant en contraste des principes prescriptifs du \emph{muthos} aristotélicien formant une chaîne causale téléologique fondée sur une loi d'économie narrative. Le quatrième et dernier chapitre, articulé autour de la notion encore trop peu étudiée de canonicité, observe les poétiques de construction de mondes telles qu'elles se désamorcent elles-mêmes, dans le contexte des univers partagés, en engendrant des incohérences logiques donnant lieu à la tenue d'un discours auctorial-éditorial régissant les vérités fictionnelles comme moyen de maintenir l'immersivité de la représentation. L'analyse générique des comic-books de superhéros et une enquête sur la gestion éditoriale de l'univers de Star Wars permettront d'identifier les multiples modalités de délimitation de la frontière entre canon et apocryphe. En conclusion, je reviens brièvement sur la notion d'immersion, ainsi exemplifiée, en la resémiotisant comme une médiation compétitive de mise en présence de l'être. / Starting from Erich Auerbach's interpretation of the Homeric epic, this master's dissertation studies the notion of fictional immersion, not in its psychological aspect of a contingent phenomena of human consciousness, but rather in its collective imaginary sense, as a societal myth of immediacy generating concrete aesthetic and media strategies that I investigate from the standpoint of contemporary poetics of world building. The objective is to apprehend the aesthetic repercussions of this desire for a mediation that would conceal both the real and its own mediacy, in a time where transfictionality and transmedia storytelling are becoming more and more the dominant narrative modes of our contemporary western culture. Under the conviction that immersion must be looked at as a set of cultural strategies, the first chapter unravels some theorical difficulties bounded to the term by problematizing it towards ontological questions of truth and Sartre's phenomenological stance on the imaginary. While laying a necessary theorical toolset for subsequent analyses, the second chapter examines these problems by borrowing to possible worlds modal theories a set of working concepts, which will lead to the assumption that fiction is a movement of distanciation, notably with the aide of the formal concept of ``world''. Through a reading of the tolkienian novel, the third chapter directs the desire for immersion towards an encyclopedic impulsion for completeness, embodied by textual strategies such as informational proliferation and allusion to virtual diegetic data -- strategies leaving an impression of the actual that I describe as extra-narrative in contrast to Aristote's \emph{muthos} forming a teological causal chain based on a principle of an unitary narrative. The fourth and final chapter, articulated around the still too little studied notion of canonicity, observes poetics of world building as they neutralize themselves, particularly with shared universes, by generating logical inconsistencies giving birth to authorial and editorial discourses stating fictional truths as a way of maintaining the mediation's immersivity. The analysis of the superhero comics genre and an inquiry of the editorial management of the Star Wars universe will exemplify the multiple modalities of this delimitation between the canon and the apocryphal. As a conclusion, I briefly come back to the notion of immersion itself by redescribing it as a competitive mediation of presence.

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Ce mémoire a pour objet d'étude la ville et l'architecture dans les films d'anticipation. Le cinéma y est pris dans sa dimension critique, c'est-à-dire dans sa capacité de formuler des discours sur la ville et l'architecture. Ces discours se comprennent par la mise en relief des conditions d'émergence des films et par extension, celle de leurs décors. L'idée que l'on se fait de la ville du futur dépend donc de facteurs contemporains à chaque film : le contexte socio-politique, économique et culturel dans lequel un film a été produit, les théories et pratiques de l'architecture à la même époque ainsi que l'histoire que raconte le film sont quelques-uns de ces facteurs. Cette étude présente donc l'analyse de quelques films d'anticipation sélectionnés à travers toute l'histoire du cinéma. Metropolis de Fritz Lang, Just Imagine de David Butler, Alphaville de Jean-Luc Godard, la trilogie Star Wars de George Lucas et Blade Runner de Ridley Scott sont les sujets principaux de ce mémoire. / Québec Université Laval, Bibliothèque 2014

This dissertation examines how the major television networks, in conjunction with the Reagan administration, launched a lingering cloud of nuclear anxiety that helped to revive the Cold War during the 1980s. Placed within a larger political and cultural post-war context, this national preoccupation with a global show-down with the Soviet Union at times both hindered and bolstered Reagan’s image as the archetypal conservative, cowboy President that could free America from its liberal adolescent past now caustically referred to as “the sixties.” This stalwart image of Reagan, created and carefully managed by a number of highly-paid marketing executives, as one of the embodiment of peaceful deterrence, came under attack in the early 1980s when the “liberal” Nuclear Freeze movement showed signs of becoming politically threatening to the staunch conservative pledging to win the Cold War at any cost. And even if the nuclear freeze movement itself was not powerful enough to undergo the Herculean task of removing the President in 1984, the movement was compassionate enough to appeal to a mass audience, especially when framed in narrative form on network television. In the early 1980s, debates over the possibility of nuclear war and other pertinent Cold War related issues became much more democratized in their visibility on the network airwaves. However, the message disseminated from the networks was not placed in an educational framework, nor did these television productions clarify complicated nuclear issues such as nuclear winter theory and proliferation. I argue this renewed network attention on nuclear issues was not placed in an historical framework and likely confused American viewers because it routinely exposed audiences to both fact and fiction, undifferentiated at the level of the mass media.

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This thesis concerns itself with a phenomenon found in film music that can be described as audible diegetic transitions. In short, an audible diegetic transition occurs when film music shifts from one implied musical placement to another by changing its pre­sented sound quality. This occurs predominantly through the employment of music that is pre-existing in relation to the release of the film where the music is utilised. These audible diegetic transitions are categorised as aural displacements and transaural dis­placements which are both anchored in previous re­search concerning stable musical place­ments. In order to answer the research questions regarding technical aspects and narra­tological implications, the thesis is centred around a film music analysis. The de­marcation of said analysis uses pre-existing songs from the film Joker (Philips, 2019) as its main focus. In order to provide a colourful and meaningful discussion the selected material also contains a variety of examples from other films. The analysis shows that the selected audible diegetic transitions can provide narra­tological implications both for a film as a whole and for a specific scene or se­quence in any film. In Joker specifically, the audible diegetic transitions arguably contain the narra­to­logi­cal im­plication of adding to the retrospective and unreliable narration, which is im­port­ant for the story of the film. The thesis also argues that the technical aspects of the ana­lysed audible diegetic transitions can be condensed into being either diegetic to comm­en­tary, or vice versa. Diegetic music is, in this context, defined as music that is im­­­­plied as being heard in the acoustic space of the story-world, whereas commen­tary music is an um­brella term defined as music that is not implied being heard in the acous­tic space of the story-world. The analysis shows that these transitions can transpire either instantly or gra­­­dually with the change of sound quality from being either narrow or wide. These tech­nical aspects contribute in under­standing the narratological im­plications of said au­dible diegetic transition by categorising them as either emotive or groun­ding. Both of these narratological implications can be concluded and described as swift enforcers of the relationship be­tween the one consuming the film and the char­acters, or lo­cations, of the film they are con­­­­suming. Audible diegetic transitions figura­tively breach the fourth wall that is the screen.

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The Internet, and Web 2.0 tools can empower audiences to actively participate in media creation. This allows the production of large quantities of content, both amateur and professional. Online memes, which are extensions of usually citizen-created viral content, are a recent and popular example of this. This thesis examines the participation of ordinary individuals in political culture online through humor creation. It focuses on citizen-made political humor memes as an example of engaged citizen discourse. The memes comprise of photographs of political figures altered either by captions or image editing software, and can be compared to more traditional mediums such as political cartoons, and 'green screens' used in filmmaking. Popular culture is often used as a 'common language' to communicate meanings in these texts. This thesis thus examines the relationship between political and popular culture. It also discusses the value of 'affinity spaces', which actively encourage users to participate in creating and sharing the humorous political texts. Some examples of the political humor memes include: the subversion of Vladimir Putin's power by poking fun at his masculine characteristics through acts similar to fanfiction, celebrating Barack Obama’s love of Star Wars, comparing a candid photograph of John McCain to fictional nonhuman creatures such as zombies using photomanipulation, and the wide variety of immediate responses to Osama bin Laden's death. This thesis argues that much of the idiosyncratic nature of the political humor memes comes from a motivation that lies in non-serious play, though they can potentially offer legitimate political criticism through the myths 'poached' from popular culture.