Science Fiction Film

This article considers The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012) in order to argue through Fredric Jameson that postmodern aspects of a text are capable of obfuscating, if not altogether obliterating, any Marxist polemics. The first portion engages with Jameson's The Political Unconscious, particularly his emphasis on class struggle and identification of ideologemes which manifest in the text. The subsequent section considers The Dark Knight Rises as a postmodern text through Jameson's concepts of pastiche and nostalgia. Moreover, The Dark Knight Rises is contextualized within the recent spate of class-oriented cinema. Collectively, the goal is to identify a trend within such films of establishing a correlation between capitalism and inequality, ideologemes and postmodernism. The final result is an increasingly impressive group of genre-spanning films which address contemporary inequality in its multifarious forms, but which treat these issues more so as narrative devices than tenable critiques of the sites of oppression.

Through the theoretical framework of queer phenomenology and monster theory, this scholarly comic presents an analysis of the unauthorised, Turkish remake of E.T., titled Homoti (1987), featuring a gay alien as its main character. Being one of the three Turkish films made in the 1980s dealing with gay themes, Homoti emerges as a metaphor for the oppression of LGBT communities in Turkey by a patriarchal, military, nationalistic regime in the 1980s. Published in the online journal Sequentials. https://www.sequentialsjournal.net/issues/issue2/yalcinkaya.html

This paper examines a variety of cyborg figures in science fiction and art, and investigates how these posthuman subject’s perceptual capacities are altered through their “cyborging,” how this might lead to greater intersubjective understanding and empathy, and advocates an embodied phenomenology for these figures. The cyborg and the posthuman are not necessarily synonymous but share similar political and ethical goals in theory: to radically redefine the human and the humanities, in order to see a way to better intersubjective and interspecies relations.
Ghost in The Shell, Anne McCaffrey, Neil Harbisson.

Soutenu par le Labex ICCA, ce séminaire entend contribuer à fédérer, dans une perspective pluridisciplinaire, un ensemble de travaux se proposant d’étudier les films ou les cinémas dits « de genre », tout en réfléchissant aux différents sens de ce qualificatif polysémique et à la variété de ses usages créatifs, professionnels et cinéphiliques.
Il déroulera une fois par mois le vendredi (15h-17h) à la Maison de la Recherche de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. Les propositions sont à envoyer avant le 15/09.

Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock) belongs to a group of films including Lady in the Lake (1947, Robert Mont-gomery) which, in the history of classical Hollywood cinema, have experimented with the conventions of the continuity editing system, hoping perhaps to achieve a heightened spectatorial identification with the narrative, through a consistent use of the point-of-view shot for instance, or a seemingly uninterrupted long take with camera movement. These experiments are informative in that they tend rather to confirm the established system's apparent neutrality, its ability at "invisible" narration. I will argue that Rope's attempts at creating "hidden" cuts, chiefly through camera movement and close-ups of a jacket, result in defamiliarizing classical découpage: the "hidden" cuts become much more noticeable than those involving eyeline matches, in particular.

This collection was inspired by the observation that film remakes offer us the opportunity to revisit important issues, stories, themes, and topics in a manner that is especially relevant and meaningful to contemporary audiences. Like mythic stories that are told again and again in differing ways, film remakes present us with updated perspectives on timeless ideas. While some remakes succeed and other fail aesthetically, they always say something about the culture in which-and for which-they are produced. Contributors explore the ways in which the fears of death, loss of self, and bodily violence have been expressed and then reinterpreted in such films and remakes as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Night of the Living Dead, and Dawn of the Dead. Films such as Rollerball, The Ring, The Grudge, The Great Yokai Wars, and Insomnia are discussed as well because of their ability to give voice to collective anxieties concerning cultural change, nihilism, and globalization. While opening on...

This chapter examines reboot efforts within the Alien franchise during the 2010s within the conceptual frame of “transmedia franchising.” Looking particularly at Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, as well as several video games, it analyses how various promotional materials and narrative devices have taken variable approaches toward rebooting this franchise, including retconning and legacy rebooting. The chapter asserts that the Alien universe ‘has not necessarily followed a systematic, planned path,’ and accordingly shows how the franchise’s IP holder (first 20th Century-Fox, now Disney) devised variable ways to appeal to potential audiences.

Presented 2-11-16 @ King's College (PA) (for Socratic Society)

In the wake of the popularity of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I endeavor to use the movie to explain some philosophy, and use philosophy to explain and explore some of the movie. To do this I answer criticisms of the movie, and then attempt to answer a number of questions the movie raised:

- Was the plot of Episode VII derivative of Episode IV (A New Hope)?
- How was Rey able to defeat Kylo?
- Is J.J. Abrams a feminist?
- What’s the deal with Kylo’s lightsaber?
- Who is Supreme Leader Snoke?
- Why did Luke go into hiding? (Does he have a plan?)
- Who are Rey’s parents? (And is Rey going bad?)

A version of the presentation, with audio, is available on Youtube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFizt76bh5k

A philosophical look at the twisted, high-tech near-future of the sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror, offering a glimpse of the darkest reflections of the human condition in digital technology

Black Mirror―the Emmy-winning Netflix series that holds up a dark, digital mirror of speculative technologies to modern society—shows us a high-tech world where it is all too easy to fall victim to ever-evolving forms of social control.In Black Mirror and Philosophy, original essays written by a diverse group of scholars invite you to peer into the void and explore the philosophical, ethical, and existential dimensions of Charlie Brooker’s sinister stories. The collection reflects Black Mirror’s anthology structure by pairing a chapter with every episode in the show’s five seasons—including an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure analysis of Bandersnatch—and concludes with general essays that explore the series’ broader themes. Chapters address questions about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, surveillance, privacy, love, death, criminal behavior, and politics, including:

Have we given social media too much power over our lives?
Could heaven really, one day, be a place on Earth?
Should criminal justice and punishment be crowdsourced?
What rights should a “cookie” have?
Immersive, engaging, and experimental, Black Mirror and Philosophy navigates the intellectual landscape of Brooker’s morality plays for the modern world, where humanity’s greatest innovations and darkest instincts collide.

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Mirror-Philosophy-Blackwell-Culture-dp-1119578264/dp/1119578264/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

En 1976, Ray Bradbury, auteur des célèbres Chroniques martiennes (1950), écrivait que la science-fiction était devenue « une littérature centrale de notre temps » : « Nous retrouvons dans chaque récit de science-fiction l’ensemble des problèmes idéologiques, philosophiques et moraux posés par le développement de l’humanité ». La science-fiction, dont la nature originelle est littéraire, s’est métamorphosée aujourd’hui en un domaine culturel polymorphe. Son caractère transmédiatique se décline entre littérature, cinéma, séries télévisuelles, jeux de rôle ou jeux vidéos. Cette transversalité formelle, iconographique, thématique est aujourd’hui intégrée de manière évidente dans la culture des jeunes générations.

Hukkunud Alpinisti hotell (Отель ‘У Погибшего Альпиниста’/The Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel; Kromanov Estonia 1979) was made at the height of the era of Soviet political stagnation in the late 1970s. It is a stylish screen adaptation of the novel of the same name written ten years earlier by the celebrated Russian sf authors Arkadii and Boris Strugatskii, who also scripted the screenplay. Hukkunud Alpinisti hotell was the first of their works to be filmed, closely followed by Сталкер (Stalker; Tarkovsky Russia 1979), based on their 1972 novel Пикник на обочине/Roadside Picnic. This article concentrates on two aspects of the film: its interesting combination of genres and intriguing interpretation of gendered representations. A certain sense of ‘queering’ prevails in relation to the film’s rather unconventional
approach to genre as well as its discourse on gender and sexuality. Our analysis is primarily concerned with the film, but also considers various units of its intertextual universe, such as
the novel and the different versions of the script.

Artificial intelligence is often portrayed in science fiction as conscious and humanlike. We explore this phenomenon by analyzing mostly recent TV series and movies in the context of philosophical issues such as the problem of other minds, cognitive theories (computationalism and connectionism), thought experiments such as the Turing Test, the Chinese room, the brain in a vat, what is it like to be a bat and Mary's room. After discussing if direct access to an AI's mind is possible and useful in terms of determining its (un)conscious status, we compare fictional AIs to their human counterparts in terms of relationships, emotions, physicality, and mortality, which ultimately leads to considering the non-humanity of consciousness outside an anthropocentric viewpoint.

Electronic beeps, synthesizer melodies, and theremin portamento conjure up images of robots, aliens, space, and a dystopian technological future. This association with science fiction has a significant legacy (Hayward 2004; Laudadio 2011), including theremin in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), the first all-electronic soundtrack for The Forbidden Planet (1956), and synthesizer in Solaris (1972). This association also has ideological precedence in the link of technology with the “mystical and visionary” (Collins and d’Escrivan 2007, 13) in both early electronic music and science fiction, and in “electronic sound’s indexical relationship to intangible spaces, both cosmic and psychological” because they are “necessarily concealed, remote, detached” (Leydon 2004, 63). By 2015, given the abundance of non-electronic science fiction soundtracks—such as A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Prometheus (2012), and Interstellar (2014)—we should be transcending these automatic connections. Not so, it seems, in the ears of my undergraduate general education students. Exposure to electroacoustic music recently in class and at a faculty composers concert resulted in characterizations of the music by these students as “creepy” and “like a science fiction soundtrack,” when, to my ears, the sounds had warmth and beauty, with many musical aspects we had been discussing in acoustic examples.

Following a brief history of electronic music in science fiction, and a synthesis of perception and agency in electroacoustic music (d’Escrivan 2006; Emmerson 2007; Smalley 1996 and 1997), this paper outlines pedagogical strategies for removing students’ aural and conceptual barriers to electroacoustic music, providing a vocabulary, and facilitating critical listening through activities and assignments based primarily on Elizabeth Barkley’s Classroom Engagement Techniques (2009) and Judy Lochhead’s principles of phenomenological listening (1995). The paper will demonstrate this pedagogical approach to listening using Hugh Le Caine’s Dripsody (1955) and three remixes released on the Canadian Music Centre’s Centretracks.

Au cinéma, le plaisir esthétique repose, comme le soulignait déjà Hugo Munsterberg, sur l’affranchissement de l’individu tant du déterminisme naturel qui limite ses mouvements que du déterminisme social qui réduit son empathie vis-à-vis d’autrui.  C’est cette puissance d’expérience — au sens du verbe anglosaxon “to experience” — dont le cinéma dote notre corps, cette libération de notre faculté d’imagination et de notre capacité de rapprochement que permet d’éprouver le plaisir cinématographique de l’incarnation dans un corps étranger. Expérience de l’ubiquité, le cinéma ouvre, en tant que technique d’incarnation, sur l’expérience de la “sympathie”, étendue par Avatar à l’ensemble des êtres qui composent notre écosystème.

" The Matrix Trilogy " , which was scripted and directed by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, is one of the most important science fiction films. " The problem of reality " , which has been present, in various forms, ever since Plato's " allegory of the cave " , is once again being evaluated in " The Matrix Trilogy " through the medium of cinema. Moreover, there are various opinions regarding exactly what the main natures of human are in " The Matrix Trilogy ". Furthermore, " The Matrix Trilogy " provides a striking view on the relationship between the " basic natures of human " and the " system " in which humans live. The system explored, and the human insights examined in " The Matrix Trilogy " have a distinctly philosophical feel. As such, this article analyses " The Matrix Trilogy " , viewing it as a work of art which presents philosophical problems. Therefore, the dialogues in " The Matrix Trilogy " and the context of the dialogues shall be taken as the basic reference resource for the analysis. This article studies the nature of the understanding of system and human in the " The Matrix Trilogy " , with particular emphasis on analysing the content of dialogues. The article concludes that the basic human characteristics which distinguish " Neo " from other living beings in " The Matrix Trilogy " are " the ability to know " and " the will of change. " Keywords: The Matrix Trilogy, science fiction films, the will of change, the ability to know, the problem of reality, knowledge, system.

This paper attempts to explore the relevance of affective phenomena in the genealogy of cultural and philosophical posthumanism. In its genealogical endeavour, this article expands the lens of posthuman by taking up Spinoza's notion of "affectio" and "affectus" from his Ethics. The paper would also argue how emotional competence makes AI more performative. Given that a new pathway for mental health has been opened up while emotions (on both sides) are activated, modulated, and exchanged to a biological and a nonbiological entity. The trajectory of this paper would take up social theorists and philosophers like Brian Massumi, Deleuze and Guattari to trace the affective phenomena in Spike Jonze's academy awardwinning film Her (2013).

Films of Andrei Tarkovsky has been often interpreted as an examples of poetic, symbolic or religious cinema. Examination of the reception of director's famous films “Solyaris” and “Stalker” by Soviet critics and spectators gives authors of this paper an opportunity to suggest an alternative point of view. In their analysis of the Tarkovsky’s interpretation of science fiction genre Tatiana Dashkova and Boris Stepanov argues that science fiction became a significant tool for the reflection on the contradictory nature of modern subjectivity and eloboration of director's own cinematic style.

Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1995) was a commercial and critical success, but it is Gilliam's least understood film, even on the basic plot level. Aside from recognizable debts to specific films such as La Jetée (1962) and Dr. Strangelove (1964), 12 Monkeys plays with a number of genres: apocalypse and post-apocalypse movies; sci-fi; nuclear noir, and what is becoming known as 'geek dystopia.' This book examines Gilliam’s film—and briefly the TV series based on it—in the context of post-apocalypse movies and with an eye to the film’s major themes, including mental illness, conspiracy theories, the impossibility of human closeness, and the nature of reality. It is the first to read 12 Monkeys’ portrayal of time travel in light of Einstein’s ideas about time, and to ask what answers these ideas suggest to the film’s most basic philosophical predicament: the problem of free will versus determinism.

Films use architecture as visual shorthand to show viewers
what they need to know about characters in a short amount of
time. Using a phenomenological approach to look at a diverse
range of international, historical and contemporary films,
this book describes how we as viewers can read architecture
and design on the big screen to see a number of underlying
messages. Architecture’s representational capacity contributes
to the plausibility or realities that are possible in film. The book
provides an ontological understanding that clarifies and
stabilises the reciprocity between our actual and filmic worlds
of illusion and human imagination, thereby shedding light on
both cinema and architecture.

Exposing and illustrating how an ongoing engagement with nihilistic alienation may contribute to, rather than detract from, the value of life, Cinematic Nihilism both challenges and builds upon past scholarship that has scrutinised nihilism in the media, but which has generally over-emphasised its negative and destructive aspects. Through case studies of popular films, including Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises, Dawn of the Dead and The Human Centipede, and with chapters on Scotland’s cinematic portrayal as both a site of ‘nihilistic sacrifice’ and as ‘nowhere in particular’, this book presents a necessary corrective, re-emphasising the constructive potential of cinematic nihilism and casting it as a phenomenon that need not be overcome.

The ethics of human enhancement has been a hotly debated topic in the last 15 years. In this debate, some advocate examining science fiction stories to elucidate the ethical issues regarding the current phenomenon of human enhancement. Stories from science fiction seem well suited to analyze biomedical advances, providing some possible case studies. Of particular interest is the work of screenwriter Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, S1m0ne, In Time, and Good Kill), which often focuses on ethical questions raised by the use of new technologies. Examining the movie In Time (2011), the aim of this paper is to show how science fiction can contribute to the ethical debate of human enhancement. In Time provides an interesting case study to explore what could be some of the consequences of radical life-extension technologies. In this paper, we will show how arguments regarding radical life-extension portrayed in this particular movie differ from what is found in the scientific literature. We will see how In Time gives flesh to arguments defending or rejecting radical life-extension. It articulates feelings of unease, alienation and boredom associated with this possibility. Finally, this article will conclude that science fiction movies in general, and In Time in particular, are a valuable resource for a broad and comprehensive debate about our coming future.

Du lien entre la science-fiction et la géographie « On peut définir la science-fiction comme la branche de la littérature qui se soucie des réponses de l'être humain aux progrès de la science et de la technologie. » 1 , Isaac Asimov présentait la science-fiction comme un genre littéraire – rien d'étonnant – mais aussi comme une littérature qui possède toutes les caractéristiques d'une science humaine et sociale : les agissements et comportements de l'humain sur son environnement. La définition du CNRTL est plus exhaustive : « Genre littéraire et cinématographique décrivant des situations et des évènements appartenant à un avenir plus ou moins proche et à un univers imaginé en exploitant ou en extrapolant les données contemporaines et les développements envisageables des sciences et des techniques. » 2. On peut relever ici plusieurs éléments fondamentaux : « avenir », « genre littéraire » « extrapoler les données contemporaines et les développements envisageables ». Éléments fondamentaux qui doivent être interrogés et replacés par et au sein de la science géographique. Éclaircissons tout d'abord le lien entre la géographie et la littérature ou plus généralement avec la fiction. A partir du tournant culturel, la géographie a commencé à s'intéresser aux aspects idéels des sociétés. La géographie s'intéresse tout particulièrement aux représentations et notamment à la manière dont les sociétés se représentent leur territoire. Pour cela les géographes se penchent sur les productions artistiques 3 ou bien encore la littérature. On étudie aussi bien la géographie de l'oeuvre littéraire que ce que la littérature renvoie comme représentation sur un lieu ancré dans la réalité. Dans le domaine de la science-fiction et la géographie en France, les travaux de Musset sont inévitables : ou plus récemment Géographie de l'apocalypse où il explique lui-même l'intérêt d'utiliser les visions apocalyptiques du futur pour la géographie :

Contemporary post-apocalyptic fi lms portray a world ravaged by ecological catastrophes, and humanity on the brink of extinction. Such fi lms echo the urgent environmental discourses of the Anthropocene, while offering instances of a post-anthropocentric perspective and the new subject-formations it engenders. The article argues that the central rhetorical device that generates an ecocritical perspective in such fi lms is the post-apocalyptic landscape. Cinematic space shapes the meaning of all fi lms, and this is even more emphatic when setting is transformed into landscape (Lefebvre 2006). What is more, in the post-apocalyptic fi lms, the landscape becomes the main site of the fi lms' "rhetorical enviromentality" (McMurry 2017). The article examines the post-apocalyptic landscape in I Am Legend (2007) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and how it articulates the entangled relation between humans and the collapsing world that surrounds them. Using Rosi Braidotti's (2013) post-human theory, I contend that these cinematic landscapes hint at an "eco-philosophy of multiple belongings" (Braidotti 2013, 49) and enact "a process of redefi ning one's sense of attachment and connection to a shared world" (Braidotti 2013, 219). Ultimately, I conclude that the affective appeal of these landscapes implicates the viewer in post-anthropocentric perspectives, thus prompting new modes of environmental consciousness.

Anime has become a worldwide phenomenon, painting its stories across a variety of genres, eras and landscapes, as well as influencing live action filmmakers like the Wachowski Brothers and Quentin Tarantino.  In these stories about monsters, robots, children, and spirits who grapple with the important questions in life we find insight crucial to our times: lessons on morality, justice, and heroism, as well as meditations on identity, the soul, and the meaning — or meaninglessness — of life. Anime has become a worldwide phenomenon, reaching across genres, mediums, and cultures. For those wondering why so many people love anime or for die-hard fans who want to know more, Anime and Philosophy provides a deeper appreciation of the art and storytelling of this distinctive Japanese culture.