Cyborg Cinema and Contemporary Subjectivity Sue Short Cyborg Cinema and Contemporary Subjectivity This page intentionally left blank Cyborg Cinema and Contemporary Subjectivity Sue Short Faculty of Continuing Education Birkbeck College, University of London, UK © Sue Short 2005 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–2178–4 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Short, Sue, 1968– Cyborg cinema and contemporary subjectivity / Sue Short. p. cm. Filmography: p. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–2178–4 1. Cyborgs in motion pictures. I. Title. PN1995.9.C9S48 2005 791.43′656—dc22 2004053939 10987654321 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne This book is dedicated to the memory of my beloved uncle, Les, and to Alison Lambert – who each knew what it was to be a human being This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Introduction 1 1 Cycles, Sub-Genres and Cyborg Cinema 18 2 Body and Soul: A History of Cyborg Theory 34 3 Food for Moloch: The Cyborg as Worker 55 4 The Synthetic Female: Cyborgs and the Inscription of Gender 81 5 The Best of Both Worlds? Hybridity, Humanity and the Other 106 6 Heart and Hearth: The Cyborg and Family Values 133 7 Reality Unplugged: Postmodernism, Posthumanism and the Cyborg 160 8 Summing Up the Cyborg: Towards a Conclusion 187 Notes 210 Select Filmography 231 Bibliography 232 Index 242 vii This page intentionally left blank Preface Various factors influenced this study, yet perhaps the most formative event was a visit to the cinema in 1990. The Ritzy in Brixton was still a flea-pit cinema back then and would sometimes screen several films on a Saturday night, one after the other, into the early hours of the morning. One such screening was titled ‘Reckless Robots’ and combined Blade Runner, The Terminator and the first two RoboCop films. It was a memorable evening because although I had seen these films before it was only by viewing them together that I could appreciate a certain level of commonality. Most obviously perhaps, cyborgs featured prominently in these narratives – an exciting new figure that lay somewhere between human and machine and broached a number of possibilities concerning the potential power of new technologies, as well as the nature of identity itself. Equally notable was the vision of the future shared by these films, which contained a discernible critique of existing social structures and policies. Blade Runner envisages a bleak vision of earth that is all but destroyed through over-consumption, with manufactured slaves who are more sympathetic than the ostensible human selected to ‘retire’ them; The Terminator imagines a post-apocalyptic scenario in which humans are virtually eradicated altogether, with the opening scrawl affirming that this future is being decided upon right here and now; and the RoboCop films present an all-too-familiar dystopia in which the greed and cruelty of contemporary (American) culture is satirised not only in spoof game-shows and adverts, but in the corporate killing and ‘reprogramming’ of a human being – one who is subsequently referred to as ‘product’. Seen together in this way I became aware of a cycle emerging, in which a prominent theme was not simply technology’s intersection with humanity but its specific uses under Capitalism. I could see that they were cautionary tales, and that they seemed to be talking about the present rather than any conceived future, yet what interested me most was that such caution was being expressed in films seemingly designed for entertainment. I identified them as radical products of contemporary culture that had somehow slipped through the net of commercial interests. I was, needless to say, politically optimistic in terms of what I interpreted as subversive and somewhat naïve in their potential effects, failing to assess the limitations of such narratives, or to consider how their very context as SF films (much derided at the time) might undermine any critique discerned. But my fascination grew, and as years passed and new cyborg films were released, I began to identify new themes. I noted how later cyborg films opted to avoid economic considerations and chose to pit artificial humans against one another instead, with combatants either selected to represent humanity or viewed as our seeming antithesis. I also noted how celluloid dreams of creating the perfect worker were replaced with comparable attempts to create perfect women; how surrogate families began to be formed and ix x Preface masculine archetypes revised; and how the cyborg graduated from the margins of popular culture to become an icon of blockbuster status. A host of desires and anxieties were seemingly coalescing around this meta- phorical figure, and as a measure of the degree to which cultural critics were taking an interest, it duly entered the academy. New books and articles began to proliferate, subjecting the same films to a host of different readings. I read these and compared them to the films and found that something was missing. It is the diversity of critical responses to the cyborg, and the effort to evaluate what that missing ‘something’ was, which ultimately led me to undertake this study. It analyses not only cyborg films themselves, but the conflicting opinions they have generated, as well as the critical frameworks employed to make sense of them. These have included Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, and postmodern perspectives, indicating the range of approaches now used in cultural analysis and identity politics, as well as film studies. Although all have proved helpful in helping to unlock the cyborg’s significance, their ideological foundations have proven to be somewhat insecure and I have opted to expose, rather than replicate, these problems. The critical speculations garnered by the cyborg justify my long-term interest in this figure while also provoking a number of questions. What is it about the cyborg that has led it to become such a source of fascination for audiences and cultural critics alike? What has led to diametrically opposed arguments being made for its potential as a unifying metaphor for women, ethnic minorities, and other oppressed figures, while others have viewed it as reactionary in the extreme? What insights does it provide in making sense of subjectivity in the twenty-first century? What precisely does it seem to warn against, and what level of hope might it offer also? If one statement can be made in advance of the arguments that follow it is that the cyborg contains almost infinite complexity, and precludes any easy answers. As I have discovered over the course of this study, cyborg films are not simply entertainment vehicles or commercial endeavours, or even wily attempts to undermine ‘the system’, but cultural products produced within specific socio- economic conditions, offering a variety of interpretations and reflecting some of the most crucial concerns of contemporary existence. My opinions may have varied somewhat since that night at the Ritzy, rapidly scribbling my first notes in the half-light of the screen and the brief intermissions between each feature, but an implicit belief in the significance of these films, and those that have followed, remains unchanged. What proves this is not simply the critical interest they have attracted, but the fact that cyborg films are still being made two decades after their inception, a phenomenon that is owed (in part at least) to the level of popularity they have earned. In fact, my early notes from the Ritzy remind me of the remarkable audience response that night. Spontaneous applause greeted the end of RoboCop as the eponymous hero states his human name – seeming to celebrate this figure’s recovery of his former humanity and, with it, the capacity for resistance. Years later, I observed a similar reaction at a special outdoor screening of Blade Runner’s Director’s Cut in Battersea Park, as a tremendous cheer was elicited from the audience at Roy Preface xi Batty’s first appearance – and in response to virtually every word he then uttered! It is this demonstrative level of appreciation – and apparent identification – which perhaps says more than any of the analysis to come about the popularity and importance of these films and the figure at their centre, illustrating as it does the chord the cyborg strikes within us. Thanks and acknowledgements are owed to several people.