From Synthespian to Convergence Character: Reframing the Digital Human in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

This dissertation examines the changing role of the digital human in Hollywood cinema. Performing close analyses of a series of CGI-driven blockbusters, their promotional materials and reception, and their ancillary media spin-offs, I trace the transition from the notion of the digital actor or "synthespian" as a replacement for the "real" actor to that of the digital character as a transformative avatar for the both the human performer and the spectator-consumer. Although the synthespian was meant to embody the radical break between "old" and "new" media supposedly wrought by the rise of digital imaging processes, I contend that the digital human instead ultimately demonstrates how newer and more traditional media forms necessarily influence and remediate one another in the industrial context of media conglomeration and convergence, wherein Hollywood films and their characters are increasingl viewed as but one facet of much larger and longer-lasting media franchises.;As a result, I argue, the perceived "unease" that the digital human evokes may have much more to do with the complex ways in which these figures blur media boundaries than it does their embodiment of a distinctive "break" between modes of representation. The uncomfortable reception of the digital human persists with its reframing from synthespian to convergence character, but shifts such that spectator-consumers once uneasy at the prospect of new media replacing old media become uncomfortable with convergence-era attempts to level all distinctions between media forms and their occupants.;Even though their early promotional materials and academic reception suppressed their connection to traditional media, digital humans draw upon "real" bodies, mechanical interventions, and analogue recording processes associated with live-action cinema and drawn animation. Meanwhile, more recent instantiations of the digital human feature extratextual and diegetic strategies that strive to emphasize the overwhelming convergence of cinema and digital game characters, positioning the former as seamlessly translatable into the latter. I argue that the digital human's shifting presentation and reception has spectator-consumers who actively engage with all iterations of a digital character.