| dc.description.abstract | Zidane a 21st Century Portrait is a 2006 film directed by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno which follows Zinedine Zidane, arguably one of the most famous football players in the world, through a match between Real Madrid and Villarreal which took place on April 23, 2005. Rather than focusing on the game itself, the frame is fixed on Zidane for almost the entire duration of the game. My line of inquiry has focused on untangling what is meant by the assertion of the film as a 21st century portrait , with particular focus on the film s self-reflexive foregrounding of the television apparatus. I argue that Zidane a 21st Century Portrait builds on a strategy which I term formatting , involving the creation of a new format that explicitly foregrounds the relationship between televised football and post-industrial life. Rather than a typical model of portraiture, where the portrait is conceived of as a negotiation between the artists and Zidane, I argue that the mode of portraiture engendered by the film rests on a normative schema of Zidane, produced through the affective engagement of viewers and originating in the media events that Zidane inhabits. Accordingly, the 21st century portrait asserted in the title can be understood as embodying the machine which produces this schema of Zidane by self-reflexively foregrounding the television apparatus, rather than a schema assigned from the outside. This approach is interdisciplinary, intersecting art history with concepts originating in media studies, philosophy, and film studies. | eng |