Science Fiction Film and Late Modernity an Inquiry Into Late Modern Predicaments As Expressed Through the Novum

Science Fiction Film and Late Modernity An Inquiry into Late Modern Predicaments as Expressed through the Novum.

Word count: 17.554

Ditte Claus Student number: 01200408

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Bart Keunen

A dissertation submitted to Ghent University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of “Master in de Vergelijkende Moderne Letterkunde”

Academic year: 2017 – 2018

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Bart Keunen for his guidance, my parents and siblings for comforting me with food, my friends for comforting me with kindness, my cat for being there, Lennart for his inexhaustible zeal, Maxim for his unparalleled ardor, Tine for her scrupulous eye,

and Marie, for everything.

Contents

Acknowledgements ...... 2

Contents ...... 3

Introduction ...... 4 a. Theoretical framework ...... 6

1. Science fiction ...... 6

1.1. Cognitive estrangement...... 8

1.2. Science fiction and society ...... 10

1.3. Novum ...... 11

1.4. Science fiction film ...... 12

2. Modernity ...... 16

2.1. Individualization and alternative socialization ...... 17

2.2. Mediating experience of a media culture ...... 19

2.3. Capitalism, technology and globalization ...... 20

3. Modernity and science fiction ...... 23 b. Analysis ...... 26

1. Experience economy and identity extraction ...... 27

2. Biopolitics and the Posthuman ...... 35

3. Parallel worlds, alternative universes and parallel identity ...... 41

Conclusion ...... 45

Works Cited ...... 47

Appendix ...... 50

Introduction

“I want to believe.” – The X-Files

Central to this thesis is the cinematic genre of science fiction and its ability to establish narratives that interact with and reflect on the late modern human condition through the use of the novum. The term novum is borrowed from the acclaimed critic in the field of literary science fiction Darko Suvin’s theory on science fiction, in which he considered it as the defining element of the genre. It is a new thing or concept that estranges, is scientifically plausible and logically justified by the fictional world. The novum can appear in various forms, ranging from alien life-forms to time travel. These different kinds of nova will be analyzed as an expression of the risks of modernity and the problems we encounter as subjects of late modernity. This way, the novum serves as a mirror for our anxieties, neuroses, wishes and desires, and the way the modern subject engages with the fast pace of modern society. The science fiction genre, in its creation of alternative worlds, interacts with both modern technology and the late modern condition and therefore tells us something about our modern western society. It is through the novum that science fiction films express how we deal with technological innovation and the sociologic, economic, and political change that late modernity entails, and the problems that it causes. The novum often functions as a focal point to discuss wider socio-political issues than the concrete example or situation it represents. In this thesis I will explore how recent science fiction narratives are shaped by their late modern socio-cultural context, focusing especially on the role of the novum. I will examine how the late modern condition permeates through the themes, characters and overarching tone of recent science fiction films. The first chapter of the theoretical framework offers elucidation into how science fiction is defined as both a genre and as a form of cultural expression, before offering a conceptualization of the novum. Here, I will condense Darko Suvin’s theory of science fiction, paying great attention to his concepts of cognitive estrangement and the novum and substantiate these concepts with theories by other scholars. I will then link Suvin’s theory to science fiction film and adjoin theory of a number of film genre theorists. The second chapter of the theoretical framework offers an exposition of the theory of late modernity. This theory is provided by a number of scholars, Johan Fornäs as a central figure among them, and includes concept such as individualization, mediated experience and

4 technology, among others. This chapter will conclude in bringing together these two fields of scholarly discourse in an attempt to provide a backdrop for the analysis that will follow. In my analysis, I will first attempt to categories several types of nova, according to their implications in the science fiction story as well as their ability to reflect on and critique the late modern society. Through these categories I will provide an overview and attempt to demonstrate the ability of the science fiction film genre to address a variety of themes. Every category will include a diversity in nova, expressed through various films. In demarcating the scope of science fiction films for this thesis I have attempted to create a cross section of science fiction films, avoiding a replication of any science fiction canon. This means that my choice in science fiction films was not influence by any “Top 100” list but was rather shaped by personal interest and an attempt to propose a more diverse selection. In this thesis the potency of the science fiction film genre to reflect the human condition related to our current late modern problems will be reinforced, this will be corroborated by thematic and textual evidence from recent science fiction films.

a. Theoretical framework

1. Science fiction

“The strange is menacing because it looms in the future of man.” – Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979)

Originating in literature, the science fiction genre has also been represented prominently at the onset of other mediums, like film, comic strips and videogames. In 1971, Computer Space was the very first arcade video game, players had to control a space ship and engage in an outer space war against flying saucers. The production of video games has come a long way since then. Weighing heavily on virtual storytelling and interactive storyboards, recent science fiction videogames have reached a similar level of critique on modern society as their literary and cinematic counterparts. The new science fiction video game Detroit: Become Human (2018), in which the player is focalized through three androids that have become self-conscious, prompts interrogations into the possibilities of artificial intelligence (testing the player’s empathic abilities) and especially into the dangers of the accelerating pace of innovations in technology and what this entails for the future of mankind.1 In an increasing number of science fiction video games questions are raised about the relationship between mankind and technology, exploring an array of themes ranging from ecology to mankind’s relation to artificial intelligence. These themes, among others, are thus ever-present and thoroughly explored in the science fiction genre throughout its relatively short history. In this chapter, the genre’s characterizing themes, iconography and narrative structures will be presented and adduced in dialogue with prominent scholarly discourse. The science fiction genre has been widely discussed over the past few decades, especially in literary fields and more recently also in film studies. Similar to the struggle for recognition of the value of science fiction literature, the critical acceptance of science fiction films has been contested by some and increasingly defended by others. The history of the science fiction genre of both literature and film is aptly discussed in Sherryl Vint’s Science Fiction: Guide to the Perplexed (2014):

1 Meeus, Ronald. “Wanneer technologie over technologie vertelt.” DeMorgen, 18 May 2018, p. 20. 6

“If sf came to prominence as a new literature in a late nineteenth century struggling to cope with the pace of change, it has perhaps become commonplace in an early twenty-first century for which change is the only constant. Far from this marking the end of sf, it begins a new chapter for this fluid genre.” (167)

According to Suvin, the bane of both literary and cinematic science fiction has been, since its nativity, the shallow use of estrangement which results in sensationalism, in “the superficially acute but meaningless conflicts of galactic empires or strange menaces from inner space”, or in fantasy, “the supposedly suggestive but unverifiable and non-cognitive wonders used for purposes of psychic purgation and titillation” (Positions 56). In its sentimental use or in the genre of fantasy, estrangement is used as a distraction from the real world, instead of as a more meaningful, analytic device that can critique specific aspects of modern society. For several decades now, scholars have attempted to define what exactly constitutes the structure of a science fiction text. The characteristics of science fiction have been widely debated, producing an array of definitions. At the beginning of the genre’s emergence, these definitions often incorporated a value judgement on what constitutes “good” or “bad” science fiction, attempting to separate “pulp” from “quality”. In the course of this thesis, I will attempt to determine what exactly constitutes the genre of science fiction and in what way the genre produces texts that can be analyzed as meaningful products from our modern society. In my disquisition of the science fiction genre, I will most often fall back on Darko Suvin’s seminal works devoted to criticism and literary history of science fiction. I will mainly focus on his general definition of science fiction as

a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment, and that it is distinguished by the narrative dominance or hegemony of a fictional 'novum' (novelty, innovation) validated by cognitive logic. (Positions 66)

Although this thesis will not venture into the polemic or chronologic history of science fiction criticism, I think it useful to examine what many scholars, in literature as well as film, have considered to be a formative work of science fiction: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). Originating in the genre of the gothic, the novel notably hints at

7 the conventions we now associate with the science fiction genre. The science fiction writer and critic Brian Aldiss considers Frankenstein as “science fiction’s mother figure” (52–85), as it introduces new themes and literary devices that transcend the gothic and elevate the novel to a genre-defying work of proto science fiction. By way of introduction and to get accustomed to the theoretical framework of this thesis, I think it wise to utilize this widely known transitional work as a microcosm and a portal into the basic conventions and traits of the science fiction genre.

1.1. Cognitive estrangement

In his introduction to Science Fiction: A collection of Critical Essays (1976), Mark Rose conjoins Frankenstein to Darko Suvin’s theory on science fiction’s cognitive estrangement (6). The science fiction text “sees the norms of any age, including emphatically its own, as unique, changeable, and therefore subject to cognitive glance” (Suvin, “On the Poetics” 375). This cognitive glance intersects with the text’s estrangement in its critical interrogation of the author’s empirical environment. The critical character of the interrogation is guaranteed by “the operation of cognition, which enables the sciencefictional text to account rationally for its imagined world and for the connections as well as the disconnections of the latter to our own empirical world” (Freedman 17). We are estranged from the imagined world because we simultaneously recognize it as our own, we are both connected with and disconnected from it. Estrangement “does not imply only a reflecting of but also on reality” (Suvin, “On the Poetics” 377). As will be discerned in the course of this thesis, it is exactly this aspect of science fiction that defines the genre. The concept of cognitive estrangement, derived from the more general Russian Formalist concept of ostranenie and the Brechtian concept of the Verfremdungseffekt, is posited by Suvin as a way of differentiating science fiction from the “realistic literary mainstream” (Suvin, Metamorphoses 8). Not only is it the differentiating factor of the genre from other types of fiction, it is also the defining character of science fiction, substantiated by the novum: “The science-fictional text is defined by its creation of a new world whose radical novelty estranges the empirical world of the status quo” (Freedman 69). Suvin coined cognitive estrangement as a definer of the science fiction genre and implies that estrangement distances the genre from realist texts, while the cognitive part separates science fiction from other non-realist genres like the myth, folktale and fantasy. In any science fiction text, it is critical that these two concepts intersect. Mere estrangement produces fantasy,

8 mere cognition produces realistic fiction. In his book Critical Theory and Science Fiction (2000), Freedman suggests some modifications and elaborations on Suvin’s concept of cognitive estrangement. He establishes a distinction between cognition proper and what he calls the cognition effect of the science fiction text. It is this cognition effect that differentiates the science fiction genre from other genres. The distinction between science fiction and fantasy for example is “the attitude of the text itself to the kind of estrangements being performed.” The one genre is not less rational than the other, but the distinction is made “because of the formal stances adopted by the texts themselves”. George Lucas’ Star Wars universe makes “a noncognitive disjunction from the mundane world”, while works of science fiction “cannot exclude events like the action fictionally portrayed from occurring within the author’s actual environment” (18). In the science fiction text, the estranging factors relate to the author’s empirical world in the sense that a probability is proposed, this probability is thus a bridge between the text and its societal context. Because of this entanglement with the empirical world, the estrangement succeeds in performing its alienating effect, since an uncanny difference is introduced into a world that is not entirely removed from the reader, who therefore cannot immediately dismiss it as an impossible fantasy. From a phenomenological perspective, as the scholar in film studies Philippe Mather suggests in his article “Figures of Estrangement in Science Fiction Film”, the fictional worlds of science fiction are experienced as different, in varying degrees, from a degree-zero world2. The genre’s mediation of a recognizable but different reality is part of its overall discourse and contributes to its appeal to consumers of science fiction media. When confronted with the genre, the reader expects to be “engaged in a fictional thought experiment, one that uses some innovation to construct a possible world, a variation on the reader’s own world. This referential aspect of science fiction’s discourse is designed to provide a new, distanced perspective on the consensual world” (187). Cognitive estrangement can thus be seen as the overall discourse of the genre and is a constructive rhetorical effect created by the use of the specific stylistic device of the novum, or what Mather insists on calling “figures of estrangement”.

2 Suvin considers this degree-zero world as a “central reference point in a coordinate system” (“On the Poetics” 377), or the “consensual representation of reality that is shared by the implied author and reader of a given film’s original communicational context” (Mather 187). 9

1.2. Science fiction and society

In his book Positions and Prepositions in Science Fiction (1988), Darko Suvin proposes a tight link between modern society and the genre of science fiction:

“A scientific approach takes our social existence as both source and goal of human thoughts and emotions, of art and science. This does not mean that art is a 'superstructure' erected on a material 'basis'. On the contrary, literature and other arts are – in their own, autonomous though not independent, way – material products of human creative potentialities, and one of the best means for clarifying human relationships and values. Literature, film and so on, can provide sets of manageable and explorable models of social existence.” (50)

The breeding ground for science fiction themes are primarily periods in history saturated by change, be it political, socio-economic, and especially technological innovation. From the beginning of the 19th Century until now, the genre has also incorporated changes in form, tone and focus, and was mainly influenced by a direct response to technological innovations and their impact on basic interhuman interaction, as well as interaction with their socio-economic contexts. This shift from proto-science fiction to science fiction as we know it now: science fiction is “no longer associated with the wonders of God’s creation or man’s insignificance in the face of a powerful Nature, it focused instead on objects of technology, such as railroads, bridges, skyscrapers, and factories.” (Vint 4) In other words, “[s]cience fiction works by extrapolating aspects of contemporary society into a hypothetical future, parallel or alien society; thus the genre always imposes today on tomorrow, the here onto there” (Grant 30). As I will clarify later on, one of the most prominent aspects of the science fiction genre is this interaction and (in)direct critique on today’s society. In Frankenstein the monster is utilized as a critique on modern society, depicting it as a pure soul on an intellectual quest for knowledge, love and reassurance. But when it becomes isolated by a society that is corrupted by fear, ignorance and malice, it turns against its maker. The understanding of science fiction is “constituted by history and evaluated in history”, a sense of history and its possibilities is essential because the genre is “a system which changes in the process of social history” (Suvin, Positions 45). The inherently imbedded layer of criticism in works of science fiction offers an insight into certain persistent fears or attitudes towards societal changes. As we will see in the analysis, the films Strange Days, Sleep Dealer and Advantageous push forward a critique on the possible consequences of our society’s capitalist tendencies, while Gattaca, District 9 and 10

The Matrix present the viewer with the possible implications of technological advancements, and Hard to Be a God and Teknolust offer insight into the use of parallel worlds and identities to reflect the late modern preoccupation with identity and choice. In this sense, the genre of science fiction provides a critical voice that preoccupies itself with the late modern condition.

1.3. Novum

The novum serves as the crux of cognitive estrangement and is inherent to the genre. It is a thing introduced into the textual world that serves as “the catalyst for the difference between the textual and the reader’s worlds” (Vint 38), it is a literary device that comes forth from the assumed logic of cognitive estrangement. The novum introduced into the narrative estranges in the fictional world and is, most importantly, derived from knowledge and science from the empirical world. Frankenstein is written in a period marked by its rapid progress in electrical sciences, in which theory is put into practice. Electricity was introduced as a tool for modern life, and therefore it is not magic or alchemy that creates the monster, but electricity. The ability of creating a living creature from parts of deceased human beings and reviving it through a power surge boosted by lightning is the main novum of the story3. Freedman insists on considering Frankenstein “as the first work in which the science-fictional tendency reaches a certain level of self-consciousness” (48). Within the context of the science fiction story, the novum becomes the apparatus to contest our preconceived notions. It must be a technologically or scientifically plausible device that provides the stimulus that sparks examination of our convictions and expectations (Svec and Winiski 39). As will be illustrated in the course of this thesis, an important distinction has to be made in the use of the novum. The fictional world is framed around or disrupted by this novum, the fictional world is not equal to the novum. In other words: the new thing is introduced into the fictional world, like the aliens in District 9, or must be logically incorporated into the fictional world, like the Superconducting Quantum Interface Device in Strange Days, it may not encompass the fictional world itself. An example of the latter is the Star Wars universe4, in

3 See Andrew Frost’s Science Fictional Aesthetics: The Novum & Cognitive Estrangement in Contemporary Art (2) and Carl Freedman’s article “Critical Theory and Science Fiction” (69) in which they posit the creation of Frankenstein’s monster as an example of a novum. 4 In his essay “Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction” Suvin considers the Star Wars universe as an example of the sensational, and thus invalid, use of the novum. 11 which the nova are merely given a scientific flavor and thus simply used as special effects, they are not cognitively validated and do not carry any deeper meaning. The novum must “[manifest] itself as one novelty of such radical and profound newness that the superficially mundane context is dynamically reconstituted as a potential future, new and strange” (Freedman 69). In other words, the novum urges the reader to consider the radically new as something that could potentially happen, thus contributing to the cognitive estrangement that constitutes the genre. Although the novum plays a central role in Suvin’s theory on science fiction, the concept has not been widely adopted or thoroughly dissected as narratological device that plays a key role in science fiction’s ability to reflect on and interact with our modern society. In most scholarly discourse on science fiction, the ability of the genre to establish a dialogue with modern society is thoroughly explored, but the importance of the role of the novum herein is often overlooked. The novum appears as an especially useful lens for analysis, when Mather characterizes the “figures of estrangement” as reflexive figures, implying that the novum invites critical reflection on itself as an uncanny figure and by extension on the familiar, realistic world it appears in. Moreover, he identifies “norm and difference” as the main principle behind the transformative meaning-making potential of the figure, relating it to “a dialectic that can be compared with that of estrangement (or alienation) and naturalization” (200). These dynamics, he suggests, are “paralleled on a thematic level in sf by the genre’s scientific episteme” (Ibid.). The science behind this “scientific episteme” does not, however, necessarily refer to the strictly scientifically possible: “The objects, figures, and up to a point the relationships from which this indirectly modelled world starts can be quite fantastic (in the sense of empirically unverifiable) as long as they are logically, philosophically and mutually consistent” (Suvin, “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre” 379). Among the nova presented in the analysis are aliens, complete sensory virtual reality and consciousness transplantation.

1.4. Science fiction film

The earliest cinematographic narratives, such as Méliès’ Voyage dans la lune (1902), already ventured into the unknown in their humoristic reference to nineteenth-century science, accompanied by avant la lettre special effects that were widely imitated during the early days of filmmaking. From the 1920s onwards, a steady stream of science fiction films has been produced in various subgenres, ranging from pulp to critically acclaimed and expressing a

12 variety of themes. However, research contributions from a generic perspective have been limited: “science fiction in the cinema has tended to lack a tradition of critical theory. There is a great deal of writing about individual films, periods and topics, but very little about science fiction as a genre” (Neale 93). Scholarship on science fiction as a cinematic genre therefore builds on existing literary criticism. The defining characters of a science fiction film can usefully be derived from the conceptual matrix of science fiction literature discussed above. Suvin’s theory has proven useful to literary and film scholars alike. As argued by Philippe Mather in his article “Figures of Estrangement in Science Fiction Film”, maintaining a theoretic bridge between the two media “can productively accomplish the task of characterizing sf film's formal strategies without severing its ideological ties to other forms of sf, including literature” (186). The genre of science fiction films is easily distinguishable from the normative system of film genres in the realm of realism in its introduction of a new set of norms based upon cognitive estrangement. The inner kinship of science fiction’s subgenres, however, is “stronger than their obvious autonomous, differentiating features” (Suvin, Metamorphoses 12). Science fiction films come in the narrative form of drama, thriller, romance, etc., but, as I will illustrate in this thesis through a selection of recent examples of science fiction films, the more interesting distinction is made thematically, resulting in various subgenres such as apocalyptic and post- apocalyptic science fiction, dystopian science fiction, utopian science fiction, hard science fiction, feminist science fiction, soft science fiction, cyberpunk and posthuman science fiction. Themes often featured in science fiction are, among others, first contact, artificial intelligence, the end of humanity, overpopulation, the future, alternate history, parallel worlds and universes and simulated reality. These themes contribute to a specific look and feel that embraces all the films of the science fiction genre. It is quickly recognizable and “begs for some kind of critical representation”. This particular look and feel of the science fiction film is constructed not through repeating specific images, but through the genre’s persistent use of types of images, creating visual representations that confront the familiar with the alien, or that “create an imaginatively realized world which is always removed from the world we know or know of”. The visual connection between science fiction films can thus not be located in the “repetitious and therefore emblematic use of specific visual representations”, but instead “presents us with a confrontation between and mixture of those images to which we respond as “alien” and those we know to be familiar” (Sobchack 87).

The genre of science fiction film is inherently an ever-changing genre that has its basis in a rapidly changing world of technology and science. The genre’s iconography is thus instantly recognizable but never static. The film genre theorist Barry Langford argues that the power of science fiction to critique a rapidly progressing society and culture stems from its open, speculative nature. A quality that is significantly less prominent in topical or nostalgic genres such as the Westerns, musicals or war films. “[R]apid technological change has accompanied, and in many cases intensified, the often dizzying pace of social and cultural change”, and it is the genre of science fiction that is best suited to mediate “these changes and their possible meanings, in narrative forms that are illuminating, challenging, entertaining, yet in most cases not inescapably didactic or directly implicated in ephemeral political debates” (Langford 183). In his book Genre and Hollywood (2000) Steve Neale posits the issue of “humanness” as laying “at the heart of science fiction” (95). The notion of “humanness”, though it does not lend itself to an easy definition, centers around the idea that there is something particularly unique about human existence. In religious discourse, this is often discussed in relation to the soul. In secular terms, it is rather linked to intelligence and empathy. In any case the idea promotes the conviction that human beings have a particular quality that other sentient beings, whether they be alien or artificial, cannot possess. The consequence of this is that humanness is put on a pedestal. It is seen as something that makes humans superior, or at least exclusively unique. This principle has always been present in human societies, and certainly continues to be so in the modern age, where it finds more and more resistance. This resistance appears in several forms, such as the growing awareness for the physical and mental health of the animals we share our planet with, no longer seeing them as undeniably inferior; or more tightly related to the science fiction genre, the advancements in technology which can increasingly replace humans, and the rise in artificial intelligence, challenging or even surpassing our own. The concept of humanness in science fiction films can express “contemporary concerns about the subjection of the human to the powers of technology and science” and is “focused in particular by the figure of the robot and by its most recent avatar, the cyborg” (Neale 95). In other words: “within a constellation of generic concerns that includes nature, science, technology, social and communal organization and that which is alien or other, the idea of the human, upon which the dramatization of these concerns centrally depends, is broached as an issue” (Neale 94). In his book Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future (2004) James Hughes, too, points at these concerns when he states that

“at the margins where people are currently feeling anxiety about humanness, we can begin to see the future debate over posthuman personhood and citizenship” (99). This debate appears to already have emerged from the margins, represented perhaps most famously by the quantum physicist Donna Haraway in A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (first published in 1984). She has explored the figure of the cyborg, which she defines as “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (291), as a threatening figure that seems to loom inevitably in the future of humankind. The figure of the cyborg, she argues, challenges the boundary between what we consider to be possible in reality and what we would think of as fiction. Certainly, the rapid technological, medical, and other scientific progress of the past fifty years alone can seem daunting and ultimately raises the question where science ends and fiction begins. Describing the relationship between science fiction film and its contemporary context, J. P. Telotte raises “the perspective that contemporary culture has become very much like science fiction and that science fiction, in turn, has become a primary expression of this cultural moment” (50). In the strong link that is provided in the science fiction genre with the time and space in which they are created, naturally has its effect in the genre’s themes. The themes of science fiction films are mostly embedded in a marvelous context and find power and attraction in their disturbance of both the familiar and the known. A specific theme, the theme of the imposter, can appear in “various degrees across a register of films that envision the other” (20). As a second prominent theme, Telotte also emphasizes the preoccupation of science fiction films with humanness, claiming that in our increasingly technological world, it is not our intelligence but rather our feelings, passions and desires which provides humanness its unique nature. “[W]e can at least be sure about ourselves, our humanity, even as we face a world that seems to deny that dimension any place or point” (22). In this sense, science fiction films can offer “an exploration of what, in an increasingly technological world, constitutes the self” (ibid.). In this sense, technology in science fiction is a means to address humanness, rather than the dominant theme itself. At a superficial level, technology in science fiction is used to create a fictional reality based on our own, on a more profound level it functions to address and explore the notion of humanness. Or as Neale puts it: “science, fictional or otherwise, always functions as motivation for the nature of the fictional world, its inhabitants, and the events that happen within it, whether or not science itself is a topic or theme” (92)

2. Modernity

“People are not helpless victims of modernization, but individual and collective agents able to react and shape their own future, though in conditions they cannot choose. Modernity is less a fate than a human product” – Johan Fornäs, Cultural Theory and Late Modernity (1995)

A second key theoretical framework of this thesis is the much discussed and thoroughly dissected topic of modernity. First it would be wise to point at the three dimensions of the modern as proposed by Johan Fornäs, professor in Media and Communications studies, in his book Cultural Theory and Late Modernity (1995). He conceptualizes modernity in three different ways: phases, modi, and levels. In his critique on the chronological use of modernity as a period in human history, Fornäs gives a long list of arguments for the ambivalence of modernity and the confusion and misinterpretation that ensue when scholars attempt to categorize modernity in a strict temporal box. In criticizing the term post-modernity for its misleading temporal connotation, and its dichotomizing prefix, he posits late modernity as a “intersubjective, sociocultural phenomenon” (41) and the “more relevant label for recent developments” (36). The term late modernity indicates a radicalization and an intensification of modernity, while it also “delinearize[s] history and instead search[es] for its overlapping tendencies, forces and logics” (33). Instead of compartmentalizing modernity into the pre- modern, modern and postmodern period, Fornäs proposes three “parallel streams in modern culture” (36) or an uneven simultaneity of three phases of modernity: early modernity, high modernity, and late modernity. In other words: “[e]ach phase is a fluid construction, loosely connected both to linear chronology and to an only faintly outlined structural typology” (33). Other scholars in sociology that have ostensibly deemed postmodernity an insufficient term are Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman5. Beck makes a similar distinction as Fornäs but has given it another name: reflexive modernity. This new stage of the modern is characterized by a growing critique and problematization not only of pre-modern remnants but also of modern processes themselves, a modernization of the modern where “[t]he goal is to decipher the new rules of the social game even as they are coming into existence” (3). Beck posits five processes that have insured the evolution from first to second modernity: globalization, individualization,

5 See Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: SAGE Publications, 1992. and Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity, 2000. 16 transformation of gender roles, the third industrial evolution and the global ecological crisis (6– 7). His transition from first to second modernity has a more metaphorical equivalent in Bauman’s critique on postmodernity, moving from solid into fluid. Bauman proposes the paradox of postmodernity in its need for order and its constantly overthrowing traditions in a rapidly changing society, and proposes liquid modernity as “an individualized, privatized version of modernity” (8–9). To avoid further confusion regarding terminology in the academic pursuits of understanding modernity, I will reiterate three modes of the modern as proposed by Fornäs. The first mode is the processes of modernization which include but are not limited to commodification, industrialization and secularization. These processes indicate a certain continuity throughout an ever evolving modernity, but the “way this process is realized in concrete forms of change is successively transformed through time” (39), industrialization has very different connotations when applied to the 19th century than it has in the 21st century. The direct processes of modernization result in a condition of modernity. It is “both a stage and phase in history, and something that some phenomena can possess: people live in modernity and their lives are characterized by modernity” (39). The “movements that actively respond to the modern condition by expressing its problems and formulating possible routes of action” (39–40) can be classified under modernisms. To try to define or conceptualize the modern world as we know it today proves a difficult task. Many scholars offer their interpretations and try to theorize and capture what it is to live in today’s western society, how our society shapes us, and especially the many (existential) problems we face with regards to technology, capitalism, identity and intersubjective relationships. For the remainder of this chapter I will propose a list of aspects of modernity, these concepts will be useful for the analysis of science fiction films in the third chapter.

2.1. Individualization and alternative socialization6

As a result of the rising prosperity in western society from the 1950s onward, the traditional frames of reference of religion and family become less influential. Their original function of

6 The structure of this chapter is derived from the first chapter of Ik en de stad: Fantasmagorie-, ideologie- en utopiekritiek in literatuur en cultuur 1800-2010 by Prof. Dr. Bart Keunen, the subsequent key concepts of modernity are adapted from this handbook and are substantiated with other sources. 17 social safety net has lost its relevance. With these frames of reference gone, the modern subject is increasingly isolated and contemporary “fears, anxieties and grievances are made to be suffered alone” (Bauman 148). Much like Fornäs, Bauman rejects the term post modernity in his theorization of modernity because we are nowhere near being done with modernity. His metaphorical use of the term liquid implies a state of permanent change of society, coercing the modern individual into an enduring uncertain state:

The solids whose turn has come to be thrown into the melting pot and which are in the process of being melted at the present time, the time of fluid modernity, are the bonds which interlock individual choices in collective projects and actions - the patterns of communication and co-ordination between individually conducted life policies on the one hand and political actions of human collectivities on the other. (6)

Under the influence of rapid socio-economical changes, the individual’s link with solid institutional communities become progressively unreliable in the modern society, causing the modern subject to be overwhelmed by increasing feelings of uncertainty. These institutions, in a society where power and politics lay in the same hands, which the individual could fall back on have become fluid and uncertain in a global capitalist society, withholding the individual’s comforting traditions and shared values. Bauman further denotes that we are presently

moving from the era of pre-allocated 'reference groups' into the epoch of 'universal comparison', in which the destination of individual self- constructing labours is endemically and incurably underdetermined, is not given in advance, and tends to undergo numerous and profound changes before such labours reach their only genuine end: that is, the end of the individual's life. (7)

And thus leaving the modern individual “with the burden of pattern-weaving and the responsibility for failure falling primarily on the individual's shoulders” (8). In his examination of the shifting significance of tradition, Fornäs also states that “the reproduction of intersubjective patterns has been problematized” and “that increasingly many traditions have been denaturalized and cannot be taken for granted anymore”. This way, traditional patterns are replaced by self-chosen ones, because as modern individuals, we do not “passively submit to pre-existing frames, rules and codes, but reshape and recreate ourselves, each other, our worlds and our symbolic forms in an at least potentially open, active and creative process” (1). The 18 modern individual has to invent their own traditions, especially in conditions of the threatening social chance and insecurity of late modern society.

2.2. Mediating experience of a media culture

The individual seldom acquires direct experiences, and increasingly obtains second hand experiences, mediated by the media, or trough theories or opinions of others. For the late modern subject, the ‘real thing’ is often replaced by its reproductions, the reproductions become the real thing. We acquire most of our experiences from mediated observations through television and the internet, basing our knowledge on representations of reality, and not on reality itself:

Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. (Baudrillard 2)

The media have come to represent this hyperreality through which we perceive almost all our observations. Here, the distinction between reality and the representation of this reality collapses and disperses, only the simulacra remain. For example, in our capitalist society, advertising utilizes signs and codes that are presented as reality, but in fact represent a separate realm of hyperreality that has little to do with reality. This concept of simulacra can be related to social theorist Niklas Luhmann’s concept of second-order observation: “Observations of the second order are observations of observations. This can include observations of other observers or observations of the same or different observers at different points in time. Depending on these variants, social and temporal dimensions can be distinguished in the production of meaning” (47–48). If the meaning of what is observed depends on who observes it at what time, everything becomes contingent. The meanings we allot to our second order observations are uncertain because they are determined by conditions and circumstance. “Observation of the second order depend on a sharp reduction in the complexity of the world of possible observations: only observation is observed, and with this mediation we arrive at a world extant in the difference between the sameness and otherness of observations (of the first and second

19 order)” (48). The modern subject permanently observes observations, but we also continuously observe ourselves and our own observations, which we incessantly weigh up against each other. Furthermore, late modernity is “saturated by communication media, which increasingly put culture in focus, in a double process of mediatization of culture and culturalization of the media. Mediatization and culturalization have enabled new ways of theorizing the modern process, social spheres and subjective identities which are both their conditions and their results” (Fornäs 1–2). Mediatization refers to the process whereby media increasingly come to saturate society, culture, identities and everyday life. This synergy between media and culture has a reflexive nature that symbolizes culture and society as an everchanging flux, in which the subjects are not fixed entities but evolving constructions, influenced by simulacra, second-order observations and mediatization.

2.3. Capitalism, technology and globalization

Capitalism proves to be modernity’s most important force. Multinational corporations have control over the world’s economy, capitalizing on the global market, the international labor flows and mass consumption. At the end of the twentieth century, it has become unclear by whom the capitalist system is curated by and in what way it can be controlled and monitored. Characteristics of capitalism include the right to private property, generalization of wage labor, profit maximalization and transnational corporations. A capitalist economy has both social and cultural consequences. The generalization of wage labor has generated the negative side effect of inconsistencies in income and job opportunities related to age, race, social stratification and gender. Wages are unequally distributed, and laborers are expendable and replaceable. “Capitalism not only consigns a large section of the middle class into a state of insecurity and anxiety (entire industries rise and fall much more swiftly than before – downsizing proceeds apace) – it also generates an underclass who are perceived as economically useless” (Young 15). We are overstimulated on a daily basis by the omnipresence of images as a result of commodification and mediatization. A capitalist economic system also instigates an increasing social inequality and individual disempowerment. The modern subject has no choice but to participate in this pervasive capitalist system. To discuss the importance of capitalism in modern society impels one to include a discussion of globalization, as the two are inextricably linked. As Imre Szeman states in his chapter in the Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2001): “Globalization is the name that has

20 been given to the social, economic, and political processes that have, taken together, produced the characteristic conditions of contemporary existence”. And that consequently this “has made it possible to begin to imagine the world as a single, global space linked by a wide array of technological, economic, social, and cultural forces” (209). The phenomenon of globalization permeates through all aspects of contemporary life,

from the complicated machinations of contemporary capitalism, to the erosion of the nation-state system and the rise of transnational organizations and corporations, to the threat posed by global culture to local cultures and traditions, and to the communications revolution introduced by new technologies like the Internet.” (ibid.)

Another aspect of the world as a “single, global space” is the idea that through all these aspects of globalization, the world has become more accessible in space as well as in time. In his book The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), David Harvey elucidates the concept of time-space compression and defines it as “processes that so revolutionize the objective qualities of space and time that we are forced to alter, sometimes in quite radical ways, how we represent the world to ourselves” (240). These processes appear as overwhelming forces when he elaborates: “a strong case can be made that the history of capitalism has been characterized by speed-up in the pace of life, while so overcoming spatial barriers that the world sometimes seems to collapse inwards upon us” (ibid.). One of the challenges in a globalized world, then, is to develop ways to cope with these radical new conceptions of space and time, because the “experience of time- space compression is challenging, exciting, stressful, and sometimes deeply troubling, capable of sparking, therefore, a diversity of social, cultural, and political responses” (ibid.). At the base of this compression of our spatial and temporal worlds lies technological innovation. New technologies pave the way for new forms of mass cultures and new distribution systems. A constant stream of commodities is perpetually in motion, shipping goods on a global scale. In earlier stages of modernity, the technological end capitalist spatiality did not extend itself outside of the nation states, today anything can have global significance. The interaction between people, companies, governments and cultures has increased exponentially as a result of a vastly expanding international commerce and information technology. These advancements in information technology have simplified things on a spatial level, but, as we all know, they have also imposed great weight on social interaction, as Leonidas Donskis clarifies in the introduction for Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity (2013): 21

[I]f you’re not available in the social networks, you’re nowhere. The world of technology will not forgive you this treachery. By refusing to join Facebook you lose friends (the grotesque thing is that on Facebook you may have thousands of friends even though, as classical literature has it, finding just one friend for life is a miracle and blessing). But it’s not just a matter of losing relationships; it’s social separation par excellence. If you don’t declare and pay your taxes electronically you become socially isolated. Technology will not allow you to remain aloof. I can transmutes into I must. I can, therefore I am obliged to. No dilemmas allowed. We live in a reality of possibilities, not one of dilemmas. (5)

Technological developments also have social, psychological, economic, and ecological consequences, and technology must be considered in close entanglement with these different spheres of experience. Global warming, for example, as a consequence of the rise of prosperity in western society, brings with it a great amount of risks and concerns that coincide with the modern subject’s individualization process and the technological revolutions. These risks and concerns are often depicted in the science fiction genre, which reflects and encourages reflection on the concerns that arise in the modern age.

3. Modernity and science fiction

“Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life - science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.” – Ursula K. Le Guin, introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness

In this last chapter of my theoretical framework, I will give a short overview of how the previous two chapters can be brought together. Therefore, this chapter offers a bridge between the theoretical framework and the analysis. First it might be interesting to illustrate the great influence of the science fiction genre on critical theory. In his chapter “Science Fiction/Criticism” in the 2005 book A Companion to Science Fiction, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. gives an overview of influential social theorists that have “adopted science-fictional tropes to explain contemporary social conditions”:

Donna Haraway, in her influential “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (1985), refitted the oft-used SF figure of the cyborg into a feminist political myth of posthuman network-beings who reject the oppressive Western ontology of technoscience. In his Postmodernism: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1990), Fredric Jameson drew heavily on the SF of J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick to describe postmodernism’s demolition of history in favor of spatialized, discontinuous time. Jean Baudrillard, like Jameson influenced by Ballard and Dick, became best known for his concepts of simulation and simulacra, genuinely science-fictional ideas applied to social theory” (55).

The science fiction genre has thus proven, throughout its history, a useful tool as it gives us a particular jargon to talk about and try to grasp the technological dimensions as well as the socio- economic dimension inflected upon us by postmodern culture, “its fundamental themes help us make sense of our culture’s quandaries” (Telotte 19). Barry Langford argues that science fiction in his book Film Genre: Hollywood and Beyond (2005) that the science fiction genre both depicts and evaluates

the economic and cultural transformations held to typify the onset of postmodernity, in particular the ever-expanding reach and exploding economic importance of new electronic and digital information technologies and the concomitant fragmentation and decline of traditional industries and the communities organised around them. (194)

Seo-Young Chu agrees when he states in his 2010 book Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation that the science fiction genre is “uniquely conducive to thinking and writing about globalization” (87) because it renders our globalized world available for representation. In a late modern capitalist world in which time and space have become overwhelmingly compressed and, moreover, the consumer is entangled in the oppressive structure of a capitalist economical system, individual agency becomes increasingly small. This individual’s disempowerment is reflected in the tenacious tendency of science fiction films to explore the opposition between free will and societal oppression. The exaggerated worlds and societal structures found in the science fiction genre act as examples of the potential and alarmingly undesirable futures that might follow from the modern blind belief in the capitalist system. Yet, a certain hope can be discerned from this assertion; as the individual becomes disenfranchised and subjugated to some perceived or authoritatively imposed greater good, its resistance to that trend will also increase. In this sense any study of the science fiction genre as a whole, seen as a vehicle to spread a protesting or at least warning voice, can be useful in a larger sociological debate concerning the ever-changing balance between the free will of the individual and the power of the governing instances. While interesting in nature, this particular discussion would go beyond the scope of this thesis. It is, however, an implied background and points at the various, highly topical tensions that science fiction as a genre can engage with. The science fiction genre places the “the alien – utopians, monsters or simply differing others” as “a mirror to man just as the differing country is a mirror for this world.” (Suvin, “On the Poetics” 374). By focusing on and emphasizing specific differences between familiar and alien, the common qualities and properties of both become apparent. It offers, or rather forces upon the viewer the task of deciding where the defining aspects of humanness and familiarity lie, and how far any entity may stray from it and still, or finally, be considered familiar and equal to, or entirely, human. Suvin continues to assert that

[s]ignificant modern SF, with deeper and more lasting sources of enjoyment, also presupposes more complex and wider cognitions: it discusses primarily 24

the political, psychological, anthropological use and effect of sciences, and philosophy of science, and the becoming or failure of new realities as a result of it. (“On the Poetics” 381)

This elevates the distinction between alien and familiar to a new level, where modern sciences become not only a tool to create differing entities, but more importantly becomes itself the subject of scrutiny. With Fornäs idea in mind, that “[t]echnology is extremely forceful within modern culture” (41), its very place within society is questioned and studied through the science fiction genre in an attempt to move away from the particulars of its effects but focus instead on the mechanisms that enable them. To conclude this chapter on a positive note, I propose Fornäs’ praise of the possibilities of the imagined: “A lack of happiness or meaning may find relief in the magic construction of models that open up new worlds of imagination where existence is recharged with fascinating significance: fantasizing about what exists also creates visions of what does not yet exist, pointing at what hitherto prevents it from becoming and thus starting a movement towards it” (15).

b. Analysis

“Time has five fingers. One is the past, two is the present, three is the future. And four is for what could have been, and five for what yet could be.” – The Sticky Fingers of Time (1997)

The aim of this thesis is to accumulate the theories concerning the science fiction genre and the late modern aspects of life and condense them through specific examples of science fiction films from the last couple of decades. The analysis presented below is based on close readings of a corpus of science fiction films, focusing on their variety of themes and nova. From the outset of this thesis, an exploratory analysis was conducted on a corpus of 25 science fiction films released between 1995 and 2016. In selecting the corpus, attention was paid to establishing a variety in nationality, filmmaker, political perspective, subgenre, and production context in an attempt to offer a more nuanced ensemble of films, and thereby contesting the canon presented in science fiction film discourse. An overview of this film sample can be found in the appendix. A tighter selection of science fiction films remains for the concrete analysis after a thorough dissection of the late modern aspects presented in the theoretical framework, and its intersection with the science fiction film genre. The remaining films present us with different kinds of nova that reflect the modern condition humaine in a variety of ways, and they notably criticize the late modern tendencies such as late capitalism, mediated experience and dependency on technology in its contamination and possible corruption of identity. To structure the analysis of the films a typology of nova is firstly presented. These categories of the novum include nova of experience economy and identity extraction, nova of biopolitics and the posthuman and the nova of parallel worlds and alternate universes.7

7 Unless specifically stated otherwise, all citations in the following chapters are transcripts from the films discussed. 26

1. Experience economy and identity extraction

A first type of novum noticeable in late modern science fiction film can be categorized as technologies capable of extracting, reproducing or disseminating aspects of human experience and identity. In a great number of late modern science fiction films memories, thoughts, feelings or physical sensations, as intrinsic elements of human consciousness, are reduced to something that can be captured, bought and traded. This process of commodification is ever-present in the late modern society, where late capitalism reigns and seeps through every aspect of modern life. In this chapter I will expand on this aspect of modernity by dissecting various forms of this category of novum as presented in a number of science fiction films. Attuned to the ailments of our time as they may be, it’s important to note that these technologies and their relating themes also fit into generic conventions of the science fiction genre. As Frost notes; “science fiction is typically defined as a kind of fiction concerned with technology and the future, speculating on the outcomes of the meeting of one with the other” (1). What this analysis is specifically interested in is not so much the ways these technologies are variations of classic science fiction themes, but much rather how filmmakers utilize the generic framework of the science fiction film in addressing anxieties around the interchangeability of identity and the loss of individual uniqueness. These themes can be considered pivotal to the late modern condition and find their expression in the nova of films such as Strange Days, Minority Report, Sleep Dealer, Vanishing Waves and Advantageous. Not only do these films critically reflect on these fears and frustrations, but all of them also offer a cautionary illustration of how late capitalism can appropriate and commodify components of the human identity. Even memory, experience and emotions, as core components of individual identity and uniqueness, cannot escape the omnipresence and the all-consuming grip of late capitalism. This critical reading of late modern society has been a theme in many science fiction films. In these films, our experiences and consciousness become trinkets of late capitalism and its ability to turn everything into a commodity. Kathryn Bigelow’s 1995 film Strange Days is a science fiction film about the blurry borders between technology, memory and the all-consuming logics of the free market. While adhering to many of the rules and tropes of the science fiction genre, it’s also a film characterized by a large degree of generic hybridity. As Susanne Wegener states accurately in her book Restless Subjects in Rigid Systems: Risk and Speculation in Millennial Fictions of the North American Pacific Rim (2014), the film is a “fusion of the generic codes of the science fiction film, the film noir, and the action film” (79). Part neo-noir with speculative and 27 apocalyptic tendencies, part socio-critical sci-fi, the film offers a grim view on the American society in a context of late capitalism, whilst incorporating several topical issues of America in the 1990s. Strange Days takes place four years in the future in 1999 during the two days leading up to the fin-de-siècle and is set in a dystopian, corrupt, capitalist society in socio-economical unrest. The film tackles several themes including race, capitalism, abuse of power and violence. Despite all its visceral thrills and explosive action scenes, the film touches upon themes of racial tensions and police brutality, making it even eerily topical today. Police forces are presented as corrupt and impotent entities, mainly existing to uphold the status-quo of racial and socio- economic discrimination. Or as a news anchor in the film attests: “The LAPD is an insurance company that doesn’t want accidents”. The novum presented in Strange Day is a device that can extract components of individuality and personality, transforming them into commodities of mediated experience. This device, the Superconducting Quantum Interface Device or SQUID, is an apparatus that allows sensory information of sight, hearing, smell, taste and emotions to be recorded and played back. In the diegetic universe of the film, the device is originally developed by the military as an instrument of surveillance and is now illegally exploited on the black market and commodified as an escapist tool. A person wearing the SQUID transmits his/her experience onto a disk, to compose a library of memories or to sell it on the black market. The protagonist of the film, Lenny Nero, is a dealer in this trade of experiences. He aptly describes it in his sales pitch to a client: “This is not like TV, only better. This is life. It's a piece of somebody's life. It's pure, uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex. You’re there. You’re doing it. You’re seeing it. You’re hearing it. You’re feeling it”. It is similar to virtual reality, but it “transcends the limitations imposed upon experience by conventional technologies of representation” (Law 989) because it can not only record ant transmit vision, but also every other sensory impuls. The appliances of the SQUID are thus multifold. The protagonist, Nero, himself uses the SQUID to revisit his recorded memories from a happy time in his life to escape the chaos and violence that surrounds him. This showcases the escapist potential of this technology. Unable of processing the grim dystopian society surrounding them, people use the SQUID to dive into the past, sedating themselves with feelings of nostalgia. Another, even more problematic, application is to be satisfied with the experiences of others by consuming their memories, viscerally living through intense thrills of sex, violence and even death. In her article “Steel in the Gaze: On POV and the Discourse of Vision in Kathryn Bigelow's Cinema” (1997) Laura Rascaroli synthesizes: “This mnestic research leads in a specific direction: the ultimate

28 experience (the 'snuff') of the squid's visual memory is to live one's own death, over and over again” (236). The treatment of mediated memories as a form of entertainment or escapism transforms these aspects, deeply entwined with human individuality, to be commodified. Strange Days illustrates how within late capitalism nothing is safe from entering within a chain of supply-demand by crafting a dystopian future partially built on an experience economy. Wegener further asserts that the film “envisions a chaotically violent and dangerous near-future public sphere in which market concerns and risk management determine the organization of the state, the social, and the subject” (80). Another parallel the film eagerly points at is the relation between the commodification of experiences and the cinematic medium. Formally embedding the experiences of spectacular narratives in the experience of watching a film, it can be argued that Strange Days is also posing a meta-critique on how film spectators consume violence and suffering as a form of entertainment, especially in its use of POV shots8 to visualize a SQUID experience. Just as the characters using the SQUID are stuck in the experiences they’re consuming; the spectator is glued to the thrill ride of the film’s (gruesome yet enthralling) events. Rascaroli seems to agree when she argues that “[w]e the spectators are excited, we suffer, are scared, but we cannot stop watching. There is a building in front of us. We jump, we miss, we fall. Black. We have died” (236). Film is also a form of mediated experience, which enters within a market system designed to gather profit by simulating experiences and eliciting emotion. Rascaroli continues, stating that “with the squid, Bigelow created a cyborg of perception – half human brain, half machine - without forgetting that, after all, the squid is nothing other than the camera” (237). Commenting on Bigelow’s filmography, Rascaroli argues that

[a]ll Bigelow's cinema, in fact, talks about testing the human physical boundaries and, ultimately, about the search for self-identity. This search is lead mainly through the sense of sight and uses both unmediated perception (the character's eyes/the human body) and an instrument-mediated perception (the camera's eye/the film's body). (237)

With Strange Days Bigelow incorporates the logics of commodification and risk management by way of a dystopian universe. The almost militant devotion to experiencing here leads to loss of self; a reflection fitting for the late modern subject.

8 POV stands for Point of View: SQUID experiences are filmed in such a way that we as spectators feel as if we are looking through the eyes of the person who records their experience. 29

However, Bigelow is not the only filmmaker that tackles these issues. Much like the SQUID in Strange Days, Minority Report introduces a novum in its narrative that has similar escapist possibilities. One of the secondary characters in the film, the computer scientist and virtual reality expert Rufus T. Riley, provides entertainment capsules, mostly catered to men, in which one can experience anything from sports fantasies, “look-ma-I-can-fly” fantasies, to experiencing sex as a woman or killing your boss. Everything is possible, as long as you can pay for it. The 2008 science fiction drama Sleep Dealer also includes a comparable escapist possibility in its diegetic Tijuana. Apart from drinks and lap dances, the film’s Node Bars also offer this kind of full sensory immersion: “In the bars, you can find a cheap connection. You can find almost anything”. And on the film’s social media platform Trunode users can share their personal stories, feelings and thoughts by physically connecting to their computer systems. Anyone interested can buy these highly personal stories and request follow-ups. This physical connection for both recording and receiving information is possible through nodes implanted into the user’s body. The diegetic Mexico of the film highly resembles the socio-economical struggles that the Mexican people are going through at present day, which makes the novum’s implications even more poignant. Or as a commercial in the film declares: “Your memories are too precious to waste. Join millions of others, and sell them today on Trunode, the world’s number one memory market”. In a harsh economic context, the capitalist system does not leave anything untouched, driving its subject to the commodification of their personality and experience. These escapists tools promise the spectacle of authentic sensory experiences, without making the user aware of all the risk involved with the use of these tools. The advertisements for these nova in the diegetic world of the films promise violence, sex and stunts as safe for use simulacra, all the gain and none of the pain. In Minority Report Riley assures “It’s a big rush, but you come out the other side without a heart attack”. This quote is not dissimilar to that of Nero in Strange Days, who describes his job as a dealer by stating: “I sell experiences … Almost as good as the real thing, and a lot safer”. In classic science fiction fashion, the belief in such risk-free innovations is only a temporary illusion. The transportations in time and space that are promised; do not come without their dangers, which are directly physical, brains get “cooked off” in Strange Days, as well as dangers concerning identity. The biggest threat, however, lies with how these technologies are incorporated within the machinery of a capitalist system, or nefarious purposes of corrupt state entities. In a more abstract sense, the narrative spirit these

30 several nova provide, stems from a fear of loss of individuality; a core theme relating to the late modern condition. In Vanishing Waves, we are confronted with the complete opposite. In a scientific experiment, the mind of a conscious scientist is connected to the mind of a comatose patient. The aim of the experiment is to establish if a cerebral connection is possible. Instead of extracting memories or sensory feelings through the scientific connection, such as in Strange Days and Sleep Dealer, new memories are made in a parallel existence of the subject’s mind: “The human brain is a fantastic machine. It’s able to adapt and constantly change its organization. We might be watching the real time creation of new memories”. The protagonist, Lukas, is put into a sensory deprivation chamber (not unlike the one in Minority Report and similar to the one in Ken Russell’s 1980 seminal science fiction exploration Altered States) and delves into the subconscious of the comatose subject Aurora. While the motivations for this neurological experiment are seemingly altruistic, this scientific endeavor is hijacked for the fulfillment of personal desires when Lukas starts interacting with the sexual side of Aurora’s subconscious. Throughout every episode of the experiment, his desire grows deeper, until he slowly spirals into the realm of obsession. Despite having been warned by his superiors “to be extremely careful, your objective is to observe”, Lukas starts conducting his own brand of experiments in the hope of getting into contact with the object of his affection. Here, advancements in technology signify an intrusive nature of the self, and again signify a loss of control in the construction of identity. Akin to the work of body-horror auteur David Cronenberg Vanishing Waves molds a crisis of late modernity in a twisted tale of the new flesh. The identities of both characters start melting together in increasingly grotesque fashion, and similarly, the science fiction genre melts together with its horror subgenre. The white, clean clinical spaces of the experiments sites are formally contrasted with the surreal, flesh-infused dreamscapes of Aurora’s subconscious. The novum of the film succeeds in constructing a liminal space between the boundaries of gender, sexuality and normality, which suddenly become flexible, liquid entities. While at first celebrating this newly discovered freedom, the film shifts gears as the narrative progresses and the promises of new scientific discoveries are corrupted and turned into uncanny nightmare scenarios. While not as overtly critical towards the alienating forces of capitalism as Strange Days, Minority Report and Sleep Dealer, Vanishing Waves makes the case that no space is devoid of power relations or safe from the risk of abuse. Similar to the other films, Vanishing Waves argues that the inherent vice of this category of the novum is that despite their positive

31 potential they are still operated by humans and function within wider political structures. Not only is the subversive potential of these new technologies limited, but their utopic qualities are often lost because of human error of structural inequalities. Continuing on the theme of identity extraction, the film Advantageous can also be put forward. This 2015 science fiction film takes place in the near future, where the pace of technology, communication and commerce has accelerated astronomically, but approaches the inequalities of late capitalism from a feminist perspective. The protagonist, Gwen, is the face of the Center for Advanced Health and Living, a company that performs cosmetic procedures to “empower the average person with a pragmatic response to today’s impenetrable job market”. Due to overpopulation and the slimming job market, anxiety and depression have become the norm, especially for women9. In the diegetic world of Advantageous, women struggle in this beauty-minded society under a suffocating competitive job market where appearance and youthfulness are kept in high regard. At the beginning of the film, Gwen is fired from her job because she is “too old to be of use”. The company needs a younger face to represent their products, especially because their new technological procedure of consciousness transplantation needs to be advertised. On a video call, via hologram, her boss attempts to justify firing her by saying “The point is to push the product, right?”, to which she aptly replies, “When isn’t it?”. The characters in the film’s diegetic society acts solely in function of this pervasive capitalist mindset. The promotional slogan of the Center of Advanced Health and Living promotes their new procedure by stating: “our procedure provides a solution for any long-term health concerns. The experience is akin to a seamless jump into a disease-free body of your choosing, through a lossless, relatively painless process”. Another company pitch reads: “Now let’s imagine living 48 years with a clubfoot, but on your 50th birthday, you’re a professional ballet dancer. … You don’t have to dream up that world anymore. That world is here, and it’s yours”. Promising and rose-colored as these innovations may first seem, there are ethical and political implications that cannot be expressed through this discourse. In his book Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future (2004), sociologist and bioethicist James Huges responds fittingly, claiming that “[w]hen push comes to shove very few are eager to embrace sickness, disease, mental decline and early mortality in order to avoid

9 In a very telling scene, Gwen and her daughter are in their apartment and they hear a woman crying, they wonder who it is this time, the upstairs or downstairs neighbor. It’s both. 32 hubris or preserve their “humanness.” So the constituency for a political ideology that promotes human enhancement includes the vast majority of the planet’s people, rich and poor, religious and secular” (66). In other words, the humans in Advantageous “can only grasp change at a rate they’ve experienced it. Which is why they are left behind.” In Advantageous an emphasis is put on the threats of extreme technological advancements, particularly in the context of its apocalyptic future. This future has a surprisingly clean and sleek appearance with its ergonomic interiors and futuristic skyscrapers, but at a closer look, the viewer gets hints of a more regressive society10. The disproportions of power hidden behind a seemingly perfect world clearly evoke the sometimes invisible sites of struggles within a late capitalist society. Issues of asymmetry are displaced to the underbelly of society and thus symbolically annihilated. The promise of utopia serves repressive purposes when placed in function of ideological projects. Behind the glass walls and stainless constructions of this seemingly ideal society, the same patriarchic structures still exist. They’ve only been rendered invisible or have become normalized by way of the novum presented in the film. Not only are woman here reduced to the archetype of the mother, youth and beauty become the sole currency through which women’s worth is measured. Or as Gwen’s teenage daughter cries out in frustration: “There’s so much to do. I need to exercise more, study more. I need to do more volunteer work in art. I need to be smarter, nicer, prettier and classier. … You all pretend you have a plan for us, but everyone is just greedy or desperate. Why did you have me, when you knew the world was so bad and you had to struggle so much.” The novum of Advantageous also goes beyond issues of identity politics and integrates existential questions, not unlike the nova in Strange Days and Sleep Dealer, into its narrative. Women are becoming increasingly less fertile in the dystopic society of Advantageous, giving rise to concerns of the continuation of the human species. The novum presents a solution to this problem in the form of transplanting the consciousness of subjects into alternate bodies. Side- effect of this treatment, however, is the disparity between the host body and the transplanted consciousness. This problem again illustrated the tendency of late modern science fiction to tackle the fear of losing one’s individuality. After Gwen goes through with the procedure, to secure her job so she can provide for her daughter, her host body slowly starts to reject its new consciousness. In a conversation with her boss, Gwen articulates her concerns:

10 Quite literarily in the periphery, the viewer is confronted with explosions in the background (referring to terrorist activity), a woman sleeping in the bushes (as an indication of the society’s harsh socio-economic situation) and a young girl with a mask (allude at child prostitution). 33

Gwen: “I feel this anger. Like something is sitting next to me screaming all the time.”

Boss: “It’s what we’re calling mnemonic dissonance. It’s your new body’s instincts clashing with your old memories. It might help you to concentrate your thoughts on what’s good for your daughter.”

Gwen: “For some reason I don’t want to focus on her.”

The theme of depersonalization, in which there is a detachment of the self with one’s body or identity, is again brought to life through the film’s novum technology. The consequences of these technological side-effects are similar to previously discussed cases. Subjects in the film experience a loss of meaning and a disorientation towards themselves, and this crisis is further explored on a macro-scale by analyzing how late capitalist structures enhance these problems for private gain. It becomes clear that the title of the film is wholly ironic. The definition of the word advantageous is “involving or creating favorable circumstances that increase the chances of success or effectiveness; beneficial”. Yet the film angrily mourns this logic of efficiency and attempts to reveal the victims of this discourse that are hidden in the periphery of the status- quo. Supplementary to these issues is the classic science fiction trope of the dangers of science. In late modern science fiction, however, problems do not arise out of a concern that science will outreach its grasp or create inventions of potential destruction, but much rather that these technologies will be privatized. This echoes Lyotard’s fear for the commodification of knowledge, professing: “Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its ‘use-value’” (4). Consequently, the value of the individuals producing knowledge is exchanged for their commodified value as producers of an exchangeable product.

2. Biopolitics and the Posthuman

In this next segment, themes of identity control and commodification will be discussed in relation to the physical realm. This relates to issues of biopolitics and the posthuman, as many of the nova presented in late modern science fiction are keen to explore the ways in which new technologies influence our bodily ways of being and presence as organic subjects in the world. Although this thesis will not venture into the specifics of biopolitics, it can be a useful tool to describe the use of a certain kind of novum in science fiction films. Biopolitics are here somewhat explored from a Foucauldian perspective, touching upon a powerplay that doesn’t come from above, but from the self. Biopolitics does not concern itself with social structures but is involved directly into the daily life of its subjects. Bodies themselves become sites of contestation and the subject of ever more expanding ways of control. Such themes are a variation of the issues of identity loss and experience economy previously discussed and form a central topic when approaching late modern science fiction. James Hughes considers biopolitics to be a pivotal political terrain of the 21st century and structures the debate around these themes on two sides: “[a]t one end of the biopolitical spectrum are the bioLuddites, defending humanity from enhancement technologies, and at the other, the transhumanists, advocating for our right to become more than human” (55). The films analyzed below shift between these two positions but are overall skeptical of a transhumanist philosophy in which technology is the way towards human transcendence. Much rather these films seem to be concerned with issues of control and exploitation by technologies tinkering with human limitations. Andrew Niccol’s 1997 film Gattaca provides a slow burning introduction to this conflict. As novum the film introduces an enhanced form of genetic manipulation in which, for the right amount of money, humans can be altered from birth to near physical perfection. While the introduction of this technology can be celebrated for its transhumanist potential, Gattaca illustrates how class struggle intersects with the implication of these new technologies. As long as there remains socio-economic inequality, these “groundbreaking” innovations will much rather deepen the gap between the wealthy and the less privileged, instead of breaking down these divides. Gattaca’s protagonist is the embodiment of such pitfalls dug by the advancements in body altering technologies. Despite living according to the same standard and expectations of those blessed by circumstance to have had genetic enhancement, he is consistently pulled down by his limits as a non-modified human. Attempting to become an astronaut the protagonist is 35 forced to hide his deficiencies. In the film’s diegetic society, life can only become viable and prosperous through deceit. Not only towards others, but also towards the self. The novum of genetic manipulation does thus not only signify an extension of existing inequalities, it becomes a metaphor for the structural imbalances shaping our contemporary society. Hughes considers Gattaca as a prime example of the discriminatory power of genetic manipulation, stating that “[t]he film’s dystopian depiction of genetic discrimination is now widely cited as one of the convincing proofs that germinal choice is a bad idea” (146). According to him, the film provided a fruitful site for debate on issues of technology, equality and functionality: “Will germinal choice create a society where people are sorted into rigid castes on the basis of their genetics? Will people be denied jobs or insurance on the basis of their genetics?” (ibid.). The posthuman politics of Gattaca does not seem to solve problems, never throughout the film is it specified how society has actually benefited from this technology, but much rather creates new ones. Arising with the possibility of becoming posthuman is the question who deserves to be posthuman or not. And if the category of posthuman is introduced, where does that leave the previous step in human evolution? Or in Hughes’ words: “Which forms of life should be forbidden, if any, and what does an entity need to pass from the status of property to person to full citizen – human DNA? intellect? communication skills? Does the right to control one’s own body trump other people’s distaste for the choices you make?” (57) Similar questions are posed in a more baroque fashion in Neill Blomkamp’s District 9. As Hughes points out, “[i]n the twenty-first century the convergence of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and genetic engineering will allow human beings to achieve things previously imagined only in science fiction” (xii). In District 9 these developments are accelerated not solely through scientific developments, but by way of the introduction of an alien species taking refuge on earth. References to racial segregation and South-Africa’s regime of apartheid have been made most frequently. When analyzing the film from the vantage point of biopolitics however, a new series of insight become apparent relating to the terrors of transhumanism. What District 9 successfully touches upon, through the use of its novum of the aliens or “prawns” and their sophisticated weapon technology, is the way in which bodies (alien or human) can also become commodities. The aliens might be an apt illustration of what Antonio Gramsci termed the subaltern or the disenfranchized. They exist at the bottom of the social ladder and are virtually devoid of rights or agency. To make matters worse, they also provide a form of valuable resource. Just as suppressed workers are exploited by owners by means of production, the aliens are abused for their technological advancements, which can only be

36 accessed by their genetic code. In the claws of multination companies, standing in as representatives of late capitalism, their physical identity thus becomes a valuable commodity. As with many science fiction films the distance between our world and this mirrored one, are not that different. Some components have been shifted or altered, but the world of District 9 abides structures not entirely different from our contemporary society. It’s in this sense that Sherryl Vint states, in her book Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed (2014), how District 9 offers a world “that [is] estranged from our familiar one, but the [film] differ[s] if we ask whether this estrangement is cognitive: that is, whether this difference dynamically transforms the world such that the film is a reflection on as well as of reality” (39). These power struggles are synthetized further in the shape of protagonist Wikus’ ordeals. Furthermore, the film’s focalization through Wikus becomes a key site of cognitive estrangement. Wikus starts out loathing the prawn species but is forced to reconsider his opinions after living though their experiences when he is infected early on in the narrative. Vint points out that “the play between our tendency to share Wikus’s view of the prawns as less worthy because they are inhuman, and our realization that the segregated prawns are analogous to nonwhites under apartheid law, confronts us with cognitive estrangement.” (41). The changes made to Wikus’ genetic code is presented, again in Cronenbergian style, as body horror, but the true terror comes from Wikus’ degradation from individual to hunted commodity. Once the film’s evil multinational company find out his genetic structure can be used to crack the codes of the alien weaponry, he loses his status as human and becomes an instrument for the company’s gain. As a talking head11 in the film elucidates: “He became the most valuable business artifact on Earth. He was the only human who had ever successfully been combined with alien genetics and remained alive. But his real value was that he could operate alien weaponry”. District 9 illustrates how in a late capitalist society nothing is safe from being commodified. Even bodies can be tested, used and instrumentalized as a form of capital. Again, the concerns of both the mental and the bodily control through technology, and the loss of individuality it entails, appears as a key characteristic of late modern science fiction. Another example of extreme advancement of technology and its implications on society and humanness can be found in The Matrix, a dystopian science fiction action film release in 1999 and written and directed by The Wachowskis. In this film, set in the near future,

11 The film is uses several different modes of filmmaking, from a steady camera for action scenes to news-reel footage and documentary interviews. This pseudo-documentary style ads to the previously mentioned effect of cognitive estrangement established in the film. 37 technology and artificial intelligence has advanced to such an extent that the machines wage war against their makers. This war results in the enslavement of people as human batteries. Consequently, the matrix poses the issue of loss of individuality in a technological world as a central theme. The modern individual has become subject to its own creation, which has usurped completely any ability to distinguish fact from fiction. “In the Matrix films, machine minds revolt and enslave humanity, reducing us to living batteries” (Hughes 103). This matrix is a large-scale shared simulation of the world, where its subject are entirely unaware of that fact. This in and of itself asks the viewer to examine their own reality, and to what extent our actual world differs from such an unrecognizable artificial world. Questions arise concerning our conviction that what we experience is real, and that we can identify it accurately. Many of the analyses of The Matrix tackle the novum of its virtual simulation in relation to technophobia and the anxieties of what is authentic in times of digitalization. Seed describes the introduction of computer technology as having contributed to a “totalizing electronic environment” (67). He continues by opting that The Matrix reflects the blurred lines between reality and simulation, seeing the film as an embodiment of a “transition in its presentation of reality as an elaborate electronic simulation to blind individuals to the ‘truth’” (ibid.). An underlying theme that is less frequently addressed relates to the biopolitics of the matrix universe. Apart from echoing anxieties on simulated natures and ideological control, the way in which the novum in The Matrix is thought out clearly stands in relation to concerns of the instrumentalization of the human body. After all, the alternate reality of the matrix is much rather a means to an end than a goal in itself. The purpose of the matrix, as designed by the machine species, is not to construct a simulated world, but much rather to keep humans docile as to harvest them as source of energy. The space that encages the human subjects is referred to throughout the film as “the womb”, and could be described as having an almost factory-like logic to its exploitation of this human battery. Similarly to District 9, and to some extend Gattaca, The Matrix evokes the late modern fear of being reduced to a useable, breakable and tradable body. Human identity and individuality take the backseat for a rendering of mankind as organic recourse. Such scenarios play out on classic science fiction body horror patterns as to explore some of the underlying fears of late modern life. Although not making this point the focus of his argument, Seed does touch upon the subject by stating that “The Matrix and its sequels also demonstrate the interpenetration of information technology and the body signalled in the double meaning of the title which indicates an electronic network and draws on its etymological meaning of ‘womb’. Thus the

38 protagonist’s body moves with the dictates of plot and intermittently becomes the site of that plot, in short becomes itself technologized” (67-68). Similar to the SQUID in Strange Days and the virtual reality pods in Minority Report, The Matrix presents us with an altered reality within the diegetic world, but here it is not only fully immersive, but it encompassed the subject’s entire world. In other words, the machines in The Matrix have generated “a computer program of complete reality simulation, with entire diegetic spaces and images broken down into pure strings of numbers and digital code” (Taylor 5). This fits in neatly with Moylan’s description of dystopia’s: “Dystopia’s foremost truth lies in its ability to reflect upon the causes of social and ecological evil as systemic. Its very textual machinery invites the creation of alternative worlds in which the historical spacetime of the author can be re-presented in a way that foregrounds the articulation of its economic, political, and cultural dimensions” (xii). When we want to grasp the rules of this dystopic universe, the novum is a key instrument to uncovering the tensions, fears and frustrations that have come to shape this alternate reality. Various in context, nationality and timeframe as the many cases discussed might be, the novum driven landscapes of these science fiction landscapes function according to a surprisingly similar logics. The generic conventions and narrative structure of the science fiction genre are evidently in part responsible for these resemblances. However, it is evident that films such as The Matrix, Sleep Dealer and Strange Days used many of the tropes, themes and iconography of the genre to tackled issues essential to experiences of late modern life. Similar to The Matrix, the human body in the previously discussed film Sleep Dealer is exploited through technology. But here, the novum is an instrument of capitalism, exploiting laborers from a remote distance. This distance has to be maintained in order for the system of exploitation to uphold its power. In the diegetic world of Sleep Dealer, immigrant workers in the United States are deemed redundant because a technology is developed that allows manual labor to be performed from a remote distance. It takes place in the near future when the border between the United States and Mexico is closed off, and migrant workers in the United States are replaced by robots, allowing the United States to deport all workers physically, but still exploit them through the robots. These robots are connected to workers in Mexico through nodes surgically implanted in their arms and back so that they can steer the robots. One of the characters sarcastically states: “This is the American Dream. We give the United States what they’ve always wanted, all the work without the workers.” Again, node jobs are thoroughly advertised in the diegetic world of the film and promise wealth. Memo, the protagonist, moves from his small village to the city to provide for his family: “Finally, I could connect my nervous

39 system to the other system. The global economy.” But the risks are omnipresent: “When you connect to the other side, your body hooks into a machine. It’s a two-way connection. Sometimes you control the machine, and sometimes the machine controls you”. They work very long hours and succumb under the toll the technology take son their bodies. Beside the direct physical consequences, the workers suffer from a dual displacement. As Memo puts it aptly: “I work in a place I’ll never see. I can see my family, but I can’t touch them”. As a result of new technologies, the physical component of immigrant labor has been removed, thus making them the ideal workforce from the perspective of companies. Dystopic as this situation might be, it’s not too far removed from current day socio-economic circumstance situated around the United States/Mexico border. The hypocrisies of the United States policy on immigration in which immigrant labor is both seen as something sustaining American capitalism, and on the other framed as a threat to it, finds its way to the dystopic climate of Sleep Dealer. In conclusion the analysis of our corpus reveals how the novum aids in the construction of critical dystopias. While these societies are often at first considered positive and progressive, throughout the films the systems governing them are revealed to be flawed and corrupted. Moylan describes critical dystopias as “a textual mutation that self-reflexively takes on the present system and offers not only astute critiques of the order of things but also explorations of the oppositional spaces and possibilities from which the next round of political activism can derive imaginative sustenance and inspiration” (xv). The introduction of the novum is either responsible for these dystopic scenarios or can be considered as an extension of inequalities and societal issues in our contemporary society relating to late capital and the logics of commodification it introduces. More abstractly, these dystopias also resonate on an individual level, since they are plays on the ailments of late modern life. The biopolitical regimes of The Matrix, Sleep Dealer and District 9 should in this sense be considered as an expression of the unrest of identity loss and the complete appropriation of the body by the late capitalist system.

3. Parallel worlds, alternative universes and parallel identity

Similar to the novum of identity extraction and experience economy discussed above, the novum of parallel worlds and alternative universes starts from the desire to control the abundance of choices governing late modern life. Several films deal with the theme of characters either creating or attempting to control alternate realities. These realities can be virtual simulations as in The Matrix, elaborate dreamscapes such as in Inception, or an alien planet such as in Hard to Be a God. In the late modern western society, choices are abundant and we are increasingly expected to choose our own paths. Where our paths were previously determined by our gender, our father’s profession, our socio-economical background and/or field of study, these elements are gradually becoming less decisive. As an extension of this, some science fiction films reflect our desire to shape or even physically alter reality, ranging from societal organization to mastery of time and space. The 2012 film Hard to Be a God is “set in imaginary surreal early Renaissance of a distant planet” (Kukulin 342). The protagonist is assigned the job of protecting intellectuals from being captured and/or assassinated. The narrative takes place on a not so distant planet, that is parallel in the sense that is mirrors life on Earth, 800 years back in time. This planet is controlled by semi-criminal gangs of “the greys” who eradicates any type of higher knowledge or skill. As the narrator states, people are executed or imprisoned “[a]ll because they used to create a second nature to decorate the life of people who know no beauty. Or to create glass that helped the half-blind to see and the ones who saw to approach the sky”. In Hard to Be a God, the protagonist is “on a willful attempt to control history” (Dolin 30) but he can “prevent neither the coup d’état, nor the persecution of intellectuals” (Kukulin 347). In its depiction of a mirror of western history, the film raises questions about the state of the present. Fornäs offers some insight in late modernity as a super-modernity when he states that

modernization processes have been extremely rapid and profound, affecting people’s relation to history. The accelerating modernization process has demanded new, unorthodox and unusual forms of understanding, to deal with emergent social, cultural and psychological forms. The concept of late modernity offers a temporal perspective on the present historical dynamics of cultural phenomena. (2–3)

The science fiction genre offers the possibility of an alternate world, which can serve as a tool in the practice of reflecting on history and historical dynamics. Hard to Be a God can be seen as an example of “soft sf” (Gomel 92). This subgenre is not so much concerned with technological innovation or spectacular worldbuilding, but rather employs science fiction settings as a way to engage with political and ethical issues. The alternate earth here again functions as a liminal space, holding the promise of learning from our mistakes, while at the same time burdened with the inherent vices leading to these mistakes. This tension is key to reading Hard to Be a God as an expression of late modern anxieties. Late modern life provides an abundancy of choices, yet this doesn’t necessarily mean that these possibilities can be controlled. In part this tendency belongs the classic science fiction trope of mankind outreaching its grasp. However, these tensions also relate to question of individual freedom and the ambiguities of choice tied to late modernity. In Hard to Be a God, this ambivalence is addressed through the relationship between the parallel earth and its visitors. As Malmgren points out:

The main plot complication consists in whether or not the visitor will choose to stay. Much of the work is reduced to dialogues between representatives of the two societies, dialogues which tend to fill the “cognitive space” between the two worlds, to overdetermine their relation, and thus push the fiction in the direction of the dogmatic. (78–79)

This relationship is further complicated when the lines between both realties start blurring. While the travelers do only exist in one world at a time, the memory of these travelers influences the other reality and is in turn responsible for the creation of split identities. The notion of split identities and timelines can be read, apart from being a core convention of the genre, as a notably late modern confliction. Faced with seemingly endless amounts of opportunities and choices, the prospect of creating multiple identities and persona is an appealing one. However, the dystopian nature of these alternate realities is never far away. These nova of the parallel world thus perfectly embodies the late modern experience. While these powers and choices at first show a kind of utopic promise, these waking dreams can also turn into dystopic nightmares. The struggle between changing reality, or rather being subjected to its changes, is a pivotal characteristic of the science fiction genre. As Malmgren accurately states: “The thematic locus of [alternate world science fiction] is thus the relation between Self and Environment” (120). The naïve promise of the films’ novum is ultimately spoiled by the unchangeable nature of reality and the rigid powers of faith. The otherworldly travelers are appalled by the violent 42 circumstances of the alternate world not because of alien nature, but precisely because they are so familiar. According to Kukulin “the movie represents the extreme vulnerability of civilization: a society that first resembles that of early-Renaissance Western Europe is controlled by semi-criminal gangs” (342). For Dolin Hard to Be a God even is a fatalist reflection on “the inability to change anything in Russia without bloodshed” (32). The cheers of joy accompanying the scientific development making this type of travel possible, thus decay in sad laments on mankind inability to change itself. This fits into what Malmgren considered a characteristic of alternate society science fiction: “the presence of the barrier, the physical dividing line separating the estranged society from the original society or marking the boundary of that society and the adjoining natural world. Whether a work be utopia or dystopia or a mix thereof, it generates its semantic field around the oppositions which inhere in the Self/Society axis” (79-80). As an extension on the theme of parallel worlds, science fiction films also postulate thought experiments concerning parallel lives of alternative identities. Here, the parallel world is expressed through the duplication of identity. In Teknolust for example, the protagonist creates artificial duplicate from her own genetic code, producing replications of her appearance. These duplications look the same as the original, but most importantly also realize their own individuality and choose their own paths, resulting in parallel identities with alternate courses of life. Teknolust is written, produced and directed by Lynn Hersham-Leeson and released in 2002 and has mainly been discussed in academic works concerning biodigitality, hybridity, genetics and cloning, mostly include feminist readings. With a first glance at the plot and the aesthetics the film seems playful and silly, but a closer look reveals a science fiction film that touches upon several late modern problems in exploring the boundaries between the real and the virtual world. These boundaries are crossed by three Self-replicating Autonoms (SRA), created by the genetic research scientist Rosetta Stone. Despite her colleague’s warnings not to “download yourself in your personal research”, she uses her own DNA to conceive three color- coded SRAs into the virtual world. To be able to survive Ruby in their computer-generated habitat, the red SRA, must enter the real world and seduce men to obtain the male chromosome. Unknowingly, she contaminates all these men with a virus that leaves them sterile while simultaneously crashing their computer hard drives. At the end of the movie, Stone confesses that living through her clones is "like a role in a movie, it’s more interesting than being [her]self all the time”. Stone proactively defends herself from isolation and therefore from unhappiness by surrounding herself with other

43 versions of herself. These replicants develop independently and differently from her own reality. This novum of Artificial Intelligence serves as a solution, with predictable dangers, to problems that go hand in hand with late modernity’s influence on personal life. Their juvenile mannerisms and naïve composure are reminiscent of many other female A.I.’s in film history, such as LeeLoo in The Sixth Element and Quorra in Tron: Legacy, in wishing to become autonomous and asking existential questions evolving to more mature and profound A.I.’s such as Samantha at the end of Her or Ava in Ex Machina. In Teknolust, the SRAs are modeled on the protagonist and incorporate het personality, becoming unstable and even dangerous, as they begin acting out the previously repressed desires of their original (Telotte 53). Whether taking the shape of parallel universes, alternate identities or newly discovered planets, these spaces provide a canvas for science fiction filmmakers to play with the desires, and matching frustrations, of later modern life. In contrast to the nova previously discussed, the novum category of parallel worlds and alternative universes is significantly more ambiguous in its relation toward technological innovation. Many of these films refuse a fixed optimist/pessimist reading of these societal and technological changes. Much rather, the case discussed attempt to capture the hope, the disappointment and the general complexity of the late modern desire to control ourselves and our surroundings.

Conclusion

“The truth is out there.” – The X-Files

As this thesis has attempted to clarify, late modern complications, such as depersonalization, loss of the self, the fear of losing individuality and an abundance in choices, are driving forces of science fiction film narratives. These narratives utilize their nova as a way to uncover and criticize the complications caused by late capitalism, such as commodification, economy of experience, coercion and control. These films illustrate how late capitalism appropriates these scientific developments. In the analysis of this thesis I have attempted to comprise a categorization of the use of the novum in a number of science fiction films. As a result, I have provided an overview of different kinds of novum that can express an array of late modern life. Through these categories I have investigated how recent science fiction narratives are shaped by their late modern socio-cultural context and how the late modern condition permeates through the themes, characters and overarching tone of science fiction films. What I have tried to prove in this thesis is that the cinematic genre of science fiction has the ability to establish narratives that interact with and reflect on the late modern human condition through the use of the novum. The novum, as the defining element of the genre, estranges, is tightly linked with technological advancements, logically justified by the fictional world, and can appear in various forms. These different kinds of nova were analyzed in this thesis as an expression of the risks of modernity and the problems we encounter as subjects of late modernity. In analyzing a number of science fiction films, it has become apparent that these films can present us with a mirror for our anxieties, neuroses, wishes and desires, and the way the modern subject engages with the fast pace of modern society. It became increasingly evident throughout the inquiry of these films that they interact with both modern technology and the late modern condition and therefore tell us something about our modern western society. It is through the novum that science fiction films express how we deal with technological innovation and the sociologic, economic, and political change that late modernity entails, and the problems that it causes. Firstly, the use of the novum is presented an escapist tool to seek refuge from reality and to indulge into fantasies and desires, allowing for a distraction from the overstimulation of modern life. Moreover, the novum is used as a tool to suspend identity by submerging into someone else’s consciousness risking their own individuality and identity. Capitalism’s 45 pervasive tendency of commodification play a prominent role in the sense that it provides the late modern subject with the means of these distractions, as well as driving the late modern subject to the loss of their individuality by, quite literarily, selling their individuality as goods. This results in an individual’s complete appropriation of someone else’s experience, commodifying it and thus leaving the original, first-order observer, out of the equation. This way, the human race is reduced to a product, and has as such lost its humanness, its unique quality from which it has historically derived a sense of superiority. Nothing is sacred in the science fiction genre. Or more poignantly, all that the modern human being considers to be sacred is put under a lens of scrutiny and at times exaggerated criticism. Secondly, the novum is presented in relation to the body by way of complete or partial commodification. The integrity of the human body is called into question in these fictional confrontations with the uncanny technological changes that have already taken place or have yet to arrive. This relates to issues of biopolitics and the posthuman, as many of the nova presented in late modern science fiction are keen to explore the ways in which new technologies influence our bodily ways of being and presence as organic subjects in the world. The inherently imbedded layer of criticism in works of science fiction offers an insight into certain persistent fears or attitudes towards late modern society. As I have attempted to convey in the analysis, the films Strange Days, Sleep Dealer and Advantageous push forward a critique on the possible consequences of our society’s capitalist tendencies, while Gattaca, District 9 and The Matrix present the viewer with the possible implications of technological advancements, and Hard to Be a God and Teknolust offer insight into the use of parallel worlds and identities to reflect the late modern perception of and preoccupation with identity and choice. The list of films addressed in this thesis is by all means not exhaustive and only spans over a limited range of time. Yet they all serve as elucidating examples of certain larger trends and genre-specific traditions. And certainly invite a more thorough investigation into the history of science fiction films. Another interesting digression on this thesis could be an evaluation of the use of surveillance and propaganda in these science fiction film narratives, especially linked to the pervasive late capitalist societies created in these narratives. As illustrated in this thesis, the science fiction genre lends itself to a wide variety of topics and forms. By exaggerating, reflecting, or displacing aspects of the constant and inevitable ways the world around us changes, the genre is able to creatively open up spaces for criticism and questions.

Works Cited

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Film Year Director Genre Themes Novum communication, free will, Arrival 2016 Villeneuve, Dennis sf - drama societal/technology: aliens, clairvoyancy parenthood capitalism, commodification, Advantageous 2015 Phang, Jennifer sf - drama technology: consciousness transplant parenthood H. 2014 Attieh & Garcia sf - drama apocalyptic fallout meteor: scientific laws no longer apply Hard to Be A God 2013 German, Aleksey sf - drama history, destiny societal: parallel planet AI consciousness, human-AI Her 2013 Jonze, Spike sf - romance technology: AI relationship Under the Skin 2013 Glazer, Jonathan sf - thriller alien perspective psychological: alien perspective Lucia 2013 Kumar, Pawan sf - romance fractured identity psychological: Lucia (drug) Vanishing Waves 2012 Buozyte, Kristina sf - romance unconscious mind technology: cerebral connection The Adjustment Bureau 2011 Nolfi, George sf - romance free will vs. determinism psychological: recallibrations Inception 2010 Nolan, Christopher sf - thriller subconscience, versions of reality technology: access to dreams District 9 2009 Blomkamp, Neill sf - horror/action social segregation, xenophobia societal: aliens, alien weaponry Mr. Nobody 2009 Van Dormael, Jaco sf - drama multiverse hypothesis psychological: parallel lives capitalism, commodification, Sleep Dealer 2008 Rivera, Alex sf - drama/romance technology: nodes, node jobs xenophobia A Scanner Darkly 2006 Linklater, Richard sf - thriller fractured identity technology: virtual suits, Death (drug) Eternal Sunshine of 2004 Gondry, Michel sf - romance/comedy recursion, destiny, regret technology: memory erasure the Spotless Mind The Butterfly Effect 2004 Bress & Gruber sf - thriller chaos theory, choice, destiny time travel Minority Report 2002 Spielberg, Steven sf - action/noir free will vs. determinism technology: Precogs AI consciousness, human-AI Teknolust 2002 Leeson, Lynn Hershman sf technology: SRA relationship Aparelho Voador a Baixa 2002 Nordlund, Solveig sf - thriller extinction of human race biology: mutants Altitude parallel world, free will The Matrix 1999 Wachowskis sf - action societal/technology: matrix vs. determinism New Rose Hotel 1998 Ferrara, Abel sf - cyberpunk capitalism, commodification / Gattaca 1997 Niccol, Andrew sf - drama identity, genetic discrimination biology/technology: genetics The Sticky Fingers of Time 1997 Brougher, Hilary sf - drama history, destiny, disorientation time travel Strange Days 1995 Bigelow, Kathryn sf - thriller/drama capitalism, commodification, race technology: SQUID Tank Girl 1995 Talalay, Rachel sf - action/comedy capitalism, water shortage biology: genetically modified supersoldiers