Zoning Out

Okay, this post is going to start off-topic just a little bit. I've been thinking about "zoning out" a lot lately. Stick with me here. What I mean is that I'm interesting in how willful suspension of disbelief, in tandem with a willful suspension of critical/intellectual engagement actually produces a kind of media knowledge.
Say you go see a movie that is more of a ride than a film (see Bukatman, Matters of Gravity). The narrative and plot are virtually non-existent. Yet the experience is thrilling on a sensory and bodily level (see Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts). Isn't this a kind of knowledge? Moreover, this knowledge is specifically related to visuality and to experiences that address the subject as a body that sees, hears, feels.

It's traditional in critical humanities work for zoning out and for texts that call for it (i.e., The entire Matrix cycle of films, video games, certain genres that rely heavily on special effects and huge leaps of logic, experiences with a specific and diffuse notion of the gaze) to be looked down upon or disregarded as undeserving of critical inquiry. Yet perhaps this new aesthetic and specific reception experience requires a more kinesthetic approach? But I'd also argue that zoning out is linked to zoning in--that such an engagement enables one to develop a critical perspective linked to bodily experiences and sensations. And perhaps this more "base" is necessary for understanding these sorts of media experiences? I'm thinking here of Krauss and Bois' arguments about formlessness and the need to understand the horizontal aspects of modernist art history. Perhaps zoning out resituates how we zone back in?