methodology

On the other hand, the cinematic record is irresolute, and one is compelled to speculation. Questions of method inevitably arise. Analogy —“to reason or argue from parallel cases,”— transfers accepted biological speculation into a strange, reflexive, arena, where data becomes speculative, and where one must operate with highly provisional, even suspect, statements and structures. The first task is to define and delimit the field of inquiry. Accordingly, I have selected only films wherein a naturally occurring species appears, undergoes a radical transformation or mutation in either form or behavior, is identified and theorized, and subsequently disappears (often violently) from the cinematic record. There are consistent linguistic configurations which announce (intracinematically) the appearance of such creatures, and which are always accompanied by an intracinematic speculation on the agency or mechanism for the aberrations revealed and/or described. Using the ‘guide-species’ described within specific films, I have assembled data-sets taken directly from the embedded classifications and embedded theories/ mechanisms that occur as traces within the cinematic environments, to produce a set of comparative models and analytic tables of popular reasoning about the genesis of cinematic/biological aberration.

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