Within film, fiction etc video tape has a fair few times been used to represent and be a source of the uncanny and spectres of the past, which can at times have a hauntological aspect.
You could say that this has some of its roots in The Ring series of Japanese horror films which revolve around a cursed videotape which causes the death of anybody who has watched it within seven days unless they copy it and pass it on. However, those films originated in the 1990s when video tape was still a thriving and dominant format, which is nolonger the case.
One example of “uncanny” contemporary work which utilises a video era aesthetic, settting and technology is John Darnielle’s Universal Harvester novel from 2017, which I have written about before at A Year In The Country.
In the novel customers of a 1990s video rental store claim to have seen something strange on the tapes they are returning and almost immediately even in the day-to-day setting of the video store there’s something subtly, darkly and deeply disturbing and unsettling about the story… I find myself feeling sort of creeped out even writing about it.
(Above are some of the US Promotional copies of Universal Harvester in retro video tape like clamshell packaging, including a period style “Be kind, rewind” rental store sticker, which is a nice touch)
The distinctive characteristics of video tape technology and related flaws and glitches seems to be part of what has brought about video tape having a hauntological/spectral aspect, something which is expressed and played on in the cover art for the different versions of Universal Harvester, which use a glitch art period video tape-esque aesthetic combined with pastoral images. These create a subtly unsettling atmosphere, particularly in the above UK artwork which, as with David Lynch’s work at times, also conjures a sense of prosaic day-to-day Middle American rural areas as a source of dread and horror.
(Above: fan art created VHS video tape style artwork for Universal Harvester – found at Various Small Flames.)
Links elsewhere:
John Darnielle’s site
John Darnielle’s Universal Harvester
