Video Games Against Narrative, Actions Against Representation: On the Emergence and Design of Korine's Gamecore Film

The article analyses a fundamental shift in Harmony Korine’s work, tracing the trajectory from his early films, shaped by the strategies of raw realism (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, Trash Humpers), through his experiment with “liquid narrative” (Spring Breakers), to the explicit incorporation of video game aesthetics in his recent projects (Aggro Dr1ft, Baby Invasion). I argue that Korine’s concept of gamecore – his own term for the reimagining of cinema in the image of video games – undermines not only linear narration but also the representational foundations of the medium itself. In this framework, film ceases to operate primarily as a vehicle of meaning and instead functions as a system of actions and experiences. My analysis reveals how gamecore blurs the boundary between viewing and playing, positioning cinema as a prototype of a future medium in which iterativity and affective immersion take precedence over narrative coherence and character development.

The integral version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!