Chleba naszego, paranoiczno-spiskowego. Uwagi wstępne na temat wybranych meandrów dyskursu (pseudo) konspiracyjnego we współczesnej kulturze audiowizualnej

This essay is an introduction to the topic of conspiracy and paranoid narratives in cinema and other audio-visual texts in culture, which is the theme of this issue of Panoptikum. The author uses the ideas of Orrin W. Klapp and Umberto Eco to introduce the roots of modern fears and suspicions associated with the tradition of gnosis, and later demonstrates various trends in film plots that are situated between neognosis and techgnosis perspectives. The exemplary films are linked to the fears and propaganda of 1950s American cinema, the satanic panic of the 1970s and 1980s, and the technophobic and technophilic motifs of 1990s and contemporary science fiction. Another subject is the mind games and mystery narratives of Cal noir, which often refer to urban legends and dark secrets of influential American families. The essay ends with reflections on the contemporary cybersphere, which is full of documentaries dealing with various pseudo-scientific themes and YouTube shows presenting alternative ideologies as propagated by the Tradwifes movement.