Reflexivity\u2014the capacity for cinema to address itself or the world beyond its diegesis\u2014has long been a crucial aspect of film theory and a contested practice in film-making.
\nLoosely, it implies agesture of \u201clooking back,\u201d in a way that assumes distinction between a reflecting subject and an other\u201cself\u201d as an object of reflection, as well as a temporal and spatial remove.
\nMore, by providing a visualrepresentation of the act of philosophical reflection or critical thinking that scholars could elaborate, this gesture helped cement cinema studies as a serious intellectual endeavor in the humanities.
\nYet, today, much critical writing on cinema emphasizes affect over reflection, even if not explicitly.
\nFurther, the autonomy of both work and viewer once assumed is also dispersed, a process compounded by the nature of cinematic production today within a transmedia world of franchising, platforms, digital technologies, virtual life-forms, and other image making practices. However, such expressions of \u2018post-cinema\u2019 and media are rife with what could easily be identified as reflexive elements, and arguably require them.
\nIf so, however, and this reflexivity is no longer tied to autonomy or medium specificity, the exact role of this reflexivity has been left open and uninterrogated. Is there then a need for a new theory of cinematic reflection? If so, to what end?<\/p>\n