Features of the Format of Video Films about Virtual Meetings with the Dead. Evidence from the South Korean Documentary Project Meeting You

The article analyzes the documentary video films in the project Meeting You of the South Korean MBC television network about virtual meetings with the deceased from the standpoint of the discursive and narrative approaches. The audiovisual documentation of a virtual meeting with a deceased person, prepared and conducted by the TV company in accordance with a technological scenario, becomes a product of mass culture and, in turn, has impact on the perception of death in the broad multicultural (global) audience. Analysis of the features of this audiovisual project makes it possible to assess the trends in the development of new cultural practices of communication with the deceased and ways of their representation in the mass media. The author concludes that video films about virtual meetings with deceased relatives, being essentially a staged audiovisual product, are nevertheless perceived as documentary. They document the experience of such staged meetings and record the emotions of real participants as certainly realistic. The films in the Meeting You project establish new general patterns of representation of visual images of the deceased, their virtual nature, and their interaction with living contactees. The content of such films is perceived by both the participants and the audience as genuine events, as actions devoid of a mystical touch. The emotional response of the audience of the films in the Meeting You project proves that this new experience of virtual mediatized treatment of the memory of the dead is generally accepted.