Rewriting the stars: Surface tensions and gender troubles in the online media production of digital deepfakes

This article examines a cross-section of viral Deepfake videos that utilise the recognisable physiognomies Hollywood film stars to exhibit representative possibilities Deepfakes as sophisticated technology illusion. Created by number online video artists, these convincing ‘mash-ups’ playfully rewrite history retrofitting canonical cinema with new star performers, from Jim Carrey in The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) Tom Cruise American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000). particular remixing stardom can – this contends be situated within technological imaginary ‘take two’ cinephilia, and ‘technological performativity digitally remastered sounds images’ an era ‘the download, file swap, [and] sampling’ (Elsaesser 2005: 36–40). However, cyberstars further aestheticize entertaining surface tension between coherency discontinuity, their modularity function ‘puzzling’ cryptograms written increasingly digital code. Fully representing star-as-rhetorical asset, therefore make strange contemporary Hollywood’s many mediated performances, while reskinning (cisgender white male) sharpens ontology gender it is understood through discourses (Butler 1990; 2004). By identifying undoing, frames implications for cultural politics identity; hegemonic masculinity; overlaps non-normative subjectivities, ‘body narratives’ ‘second skins’ (Prosser 1998); how star-centred engage itself socio-techno phenomenon fakery produced reproduced over time.