B(l)ending time, (de)compressing identity: Creative thought and meaning construction in Copy Shop (2001)

Abstract

According to the critics of Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT), most of its creativity-related applications tend to conflate the role of producer and consumer, implicitly proposing the deduction of the former’s creative perspective from the finished product through a process of reverse-engineering the latter’s meaning-making strategies. However, given the non-linearity and multi-directionality of the actual creative praxis, the relation between these two roles as heuristic categories need not be considered so much oppositional, as dialectical. Investigating the cognitive mechanisms involved in the ongoing creative process within the context of this dialectical relationship can help us gain some insight into both perspectives, while eschewing the elusiveness of their precise demarcation. The case study presented in this article constitutes such an attempt. By adopting a CBT approach, it offers an interpretation of the creative thinking behind the 2001 short film Copy Shop, informed by the documented insights of its creators. The article proposes a shift in primary focus from the mechanics of conceptual blending to its consequences in reference to the compression and decompression of vital relations and, more particularly, Time and Identity. On the one hand, it aims at examining how the particular ways of populating and interrelating the mental spaces that input to the blend at selected time points in the film occasion Time compressions and shape temporal experience. On the other hand, it concentrates on demonstrating how Copy Shop narrativizes the same processes of (de)compressing Identity that inform the conceptual blends it proposes.