"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may": dark academia aesthetic in the film discourse mirror

Abstract

The expansion of the sensory potential of digital media raises the question of the relevance of aesthetic analysis of online creativity by specialized audiences. A special place in the creative space of social networks is occupied by various forms of visual reference to film discourse. A specific case of such reference selected for analysis in this article is three motion pictures: Dead Poets Society (1989, dir. Peter Weir), The Dreamers (2003, dir. Bernardo Bertolucci), and Kill Your Darlings (2013, dir. John Krokidas). The choice of these films is motivated by the extensive practice of referencing them among bloggers who adhere to the dark academia subculture. The aim of the article is to develop a narrative scheme that concentrates various elements of screen action and motifs characteristic of the aforementioned subculture. At the same time, the paper analyzes the aesthetic components of the message. Applying narrative, semantic-stylistic, and contextual methods, the author substantiates the consolidating potential of aesthetic objects placed in personal blogs. Iconic images from films form common grounds of aesthetic experience. Thus, the article formulates the idea of film discourse as a reservoir of emotionally charged images that serve as the “source code” for visual atmospheres. The study shows that the trajectories for constructing aesthetic associations in blogs include intermedial messages, visual metaphors, elements of symbolic information, and explicit statements in the spirit of New Romanticism. The most prevalent formats of online publications proved to be collages, mood boards, thematic “boards”, and fan art. In turn, among the key narrative patterns, the study identified the images of the seeker-hero and the visionary–hero, the motif of institutional controversy, and the motif of “the call of death”. Prospects for further research in this area lie in the development of aesthetic components of online messages associated with the metamodernist practice of producing atmospheres.