Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Stories of what is to come: the future in film and television 1959-1989 Thesis How to cite: Bonner, Frances Jane (1991). Stories of what is to come: the future in film and television 1959-1989. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 1991 The Author https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Version of Record Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21954/ou.ro.00010167 Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk j ) STORIES OF WHAT IS TO COME: THE FUTURE IN FILM AND TELEVISION 1959-1989 FRANCES JANE BONNER B.A. (Hons), M.A. (Tas.) Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Phiiosophy October 1991 Sociology THE OPEN UNIVERSITY ProQ uest Number: 27758701 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent on the quality of the copy submitted. in the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 27758701 Published by ProQuest LLC (2019). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. Ail Rights Reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 - 1346 ABSTRACT The thesis examines films, television programmes and associated newspaper articles from the period 1959-1989 to discover how the future has been talked about in popular discourses. It considers both fiction and non­ fiction in the areas of defence, nuclear issues, ecological catastrophes, space and artificial beings. It is particularly concerned to contrast scientific discourse with science fiction to discover how the distinction between them is maintained when the temporal setting is the future and whatever is asserted or depicted is characterised by not yet having happened. The thesis begins by investigating the discursive struggle over the naming of the US military policy both Star Wars and SDI. It uses the concept of professional language and Michel Foucault's arguments about regimes of truth to explain the status of the more scientific term, while the popularity and success of the film are advanced as reasons for the appeal of the popular title. The following chapters attempt to discover whether this example is charcteristic or an oddity. The examination of the presentation of potential eco-catastrophes, particularly in TV science programmes finds minimal variation and piecemeal presentation being used in an attempt to separate scientific discourse from SF and emphasise certainty. In looking at nuclear discourse the competing claims of the defence establishment and those people making nuclear war dramas for TV to speak with authority about the future are investigated to try to understand why there is such a paucity of depictions of the nuclear future. It is discovered that talking about the future in space shifted with economic discourse became more dominant than scientific, but that this did not apply to those fictions, like Star Trek, which were constrained by precursors from the 1960s. These are the major instances of an optimistic future. In considering the case of artificial beings, changes are found within the fictions as certain categories of being become scientifically more feasible. An analogy with colonial discourse and the concept 'hybridity' proves particularly useful. The-thesis-concludes by finding hybrids of fiction and non-fiction^^ scientific and science fictional discourses most characteristic of popular discourses about the future. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1 : Star Wars/S O I ....................................................... 1 3 2: The Greenhouse Effect and other ecological catastrophes ...................... 46 3: Nuclear catastrophes ........................................................................................ 71 4: Space ...............................................................................................................103 5:Star Trek and the Nostalgic F u tu re .............................................................138 6: Being Human: Being Artificial ..........................................................................173 Conclusion ............................................................................................................220 Appendix A: Star Wars/SD! cartoons ...............................................................237 Appendix B: Tomorrow's Wbr/cftranscript .........................................................238 Sources Consulted ................................................................................................ 249 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to record my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Stuart Hall, for his belief in the project from the beginning and his assistance through the innumerable difficulties I encountered. I also want to acknowledge the support I received when things became especially difficult from my friends among the post-graduate students at the Open University, from the U207 Issues in Women's Studies Course Team and from my colleagues in Media and Cultural Studies at Liverpool Polytechnic. INTRODUCTION This study examines popular discourses about the future, asking how it is that the future is talked about in them. The discourses are tracked across several media, but mainly in a selection of English language film and television programmes about the future from the thirty-year period 1959-1989. Most of these films and TV programmes are straightforwardly fictional and thus, because it is the most common fictional genre perceived as talking about the future, science fiction (SF). This is not, however, a study of SF, but of popular discourses about the future, it therefore also considers TV programmes like Tomorrow's World which claim to be 'scientific'. The two types of material are ostensibly very different, although demonstrating that difference, especially when they talk about the future, is not necessarily easy. The distinction between them is generally held to lie in their abilities to make claims to speak the 'truth' - science may while SF may not. 'Scientific' assertions about the future retain their character by adherence to 'scientific' laws projected forward or extrapolated. Because whatever is asserted or depicted when the temporal setting is the future is characterised by not yet having happened, such projections must have a hypothetical component which, however disguised, immediately provides a space for the overtly fictional to intrude. It is perhaps necessary to note how the distinction between the fictional and the non-fictional, referred to throughout this study, is being perceived. I am not suggesting that there is any absolute, extra-discursive foundation for such a distinction. Instead I am operating with an extant distinction - within the givens of scientific discourse, scientific statements are non-fictional; on TV, science programmes are (generally) non-fiction ones; SF has its fictionality inscribed in its name, yet this is modified by 'science'. The paradox of the scientific which even on its own terms cannot but have an element of the fictional 'what-if when it talks about the future is thus mirrored by SF itself. More detailed attention to the genre is given later, but a brief indication of how the term SF is being used here is provided by Patrick Parrinder's gloss of Darko Suvin's definition of SF as the "literature of cognitive estrangement": ~ : "[i]t is 'estranged' by the introduction of some novelty which transforms the author's empirical world, and 'cognitive' by virtue of its affiliation to science and rationality."^ Thus this paradox is inscribed in the genre definition, as the science and rationality which should bring fictions closer to the empirical world are combined with the estrangement moving in the other direction. A principal concern of this study is with how, despite the shifting relationship between them, a distinction between fiction and non-fiction is both constructed and sustained in discussions about the future. I am using the term 'science' to refer to a 'discourse' in Michel Foucault's sense, as a group of statements belonging to a particular discursive formation, as the 'fictional' is also a discourse. Foucault asserts that 'science' has a privileged position within the current 'regime of truth': that 'truth' is discursively produced and regulated, and historically contingent; and that currently scientific discourse and the institutions producing it are central to the production of 't r u t h '.2 Since 'truth' is thus always a product of power, indeed produced within relations of power, it is inescapably political. As a consequence, by privileging the discourse of science (which here includes technology), I am inevitably concerned with politics. Although this study is traversed by an investigation of the fictional and the non-fictional, there is no intention of dealing with relations between the real and the fictional.