Hermeneutic Horizons of Authenticity in Science Fiction Cinema: Lens Language, Aesthetic Novelty, and the Sensorium of the Digital Age

Abstract

Computationally generated imagery, virtual production, and generative artificial intelligence have made the question of authenticity newly urgent for contemporary moving-image culture, including cinema and related digital media. Rather than treating authenticity as a property that simply inheres in the recorded image, this article offers a philosophical-hermeneutic account grounded in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s work. Through hermeneutic reasoning about effective history, the fusion of horizons, and the dialogical encounter between presentation and reception, the study reconceptualises cinematic authenticity as a relational achievement formed in interaction with spectator perception. Taking science fiction cinema as a principal case, the article advances three interrelated claims. First, what appears as “the real” in cinematic lens language is not secured by indexical reference alone; it becomes convincing through a contractual and historically effective process that depends on how the image is presented and how it is perceived. Second, science fiction cinema—by relying constitutively on simulation, spectacle, and computationally synthesised worlds—stages this dialogical encounter with unusual explicitness, producing what the article terms a “double fusion of horizons.” Third, this framework discloses an aesthetic novelty relevant to the digital sensorium, showing how authenticity operates as an interpretive and perceptual accomplishment rather than a stable representational guarantee. Situated in current debates on deepfakes and virtual production, the study argues that hermeneutic analysis can provide productive theoretical resources for understanding contemporary authenticity and for extending this approach to interactive media in future research.