Dramatizing Human Enhancement: How to Turn a Moral and Social Debate About a Futuristic Technology Into a TV Series
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Dramatizing Human Enhancement : how to turn a moral and social debate about a futuristic technology into a TV series screenplay Eran Barak Medina To cite this version: Eran Barak Medina. Dramatizing Human Enhancement : how to turn a moral and social debate about a futuristic technology into a TV series screenplay. Library and information sciences. Université Paris- Saclay, 2020. English. NNT : 2020UPASE007. tel-02933309 HAL Id: tel-02933309 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-02933309 Submitted on 8 Sep 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. 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Dramatizing Human Enhancement: How to Turn a Moral and Social Debate about a Futuristic Technology into a TV Series Thèse de doctorat de l'Université Paris-Saclay préparée à Université d'Evry-Val-d'Essonne École doctorale n°578 Dénomination Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, Paris Saclay SHS Spécialité de doctorat: Sciences de l'information et de la communication 2019SACLE041 Thèse présentée et soutenue à Evry, le 5 Février 2020, par Eran Barak-Medina Composition du Jury : Geneviève Cohen-Cheminet PR, Paris-Sorbonne Université (Département d’Anglais, Laboratoire VALE) Président Geneviève Cohen-Cheminet PR, Paris-Sorbonne Université (Département d’Anglais, Laboratoire VALE) Rapporteur Guillaume Soulez PR, Université Paris 3 (Cinéma et Audiovisuel, (CNRS-EHESS) Rapporteur Véronique Billat PR, Université Evry Paris Saclay (Département STAPS, Laboratoire Institut des Sciences du Sport Santé de l’Université de Paris) Examinatrice Réjane Vallée PR, Evry-Paris Saclay (Département de Sociologie, Laboratoire CPN) Examinatrice Mehdi Achouche MC, Lyon 3, Section 11 (Département d’Anglais– Laboratoire IETT) Examinateur Brigitte Gauthier PR, Evry-Paris Saclay Section 11, Spécialiste Scénario Directrice de Thèse (Département des Langues, Directrice du Laboratoire SLAM) Dramatizing Human Enhancement: How to Turn a Moral and Social Debate about a Futuristic Technology into a TV Series Screenplay A thesis submitted to the University of Evry-Val-d’Essonne (Paris-Saclay University) in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Eran Barak Medina SLAM lab Sciences de l'information et de la communication University of Evry-Val-d’Essonne October 2019 Acknowledgements On October 2015, on the Greek island of Samos, this thesis was conceived. It was during the “Script2Film” international screenwriting lab of the Mediterranean Film Institute where I met Prof. Brigitte Gauthier and we agreed on taking this unique road. For the courage and innovative spirit it required, which she took upon without a blink of an eye, I hold the highest gratitude to her. As a researcher, a novelist and a filmmaker, there could be no one better suited to guide this thesis. I would also like to thank my committee de suivi members, Prof. Réjane Vallee and Dr. Isabelle Starkier, for their expectations, interest, tough questions, clear curiosity in the potential of doing a serious ‘research-through-creation’ project and for their creativity in supporting the process of giving it a form. If it was possible, I would want to shake the hands of every writer and researcher of science fiction and of human enhancement, those mentioned in the thesis and those who are not, for creating the astonishing landscape I was fortunate to scroll in the past four years. I hope the final product can be considered a worthwhile handshake. The ways in which my beloved wife, Ayelet, and my sons, Noam and Omri, have given me the abilities to accomplish this thesis, among other things, cannot be described in words. 3 Abstract This PhD dissertation is a “research-through-creation” project, which set out to explore and gain insights from the process of writing a science fiction TV series pilot screenplay, that deals with the morally charged subject of human enhancement. Science fiction is a very important genre in today’s rapidly changing world, with its continuously advancing technology. Science fiction novels, movies and TV series play a major role in creating a social, moral and cultural discourse about how we, as humanity, can and should deal with current and future technologies and lead the way we evolve. Human enhancement is one of the major technologies whose potential evolvement could disrupt and change society and humanity in a significant way by offering humankind the possibility to transcend natural selection and control how it will develop. The science fiction writer is in a unique position in which he/she needs to mediate science, technology and their psychological, moral and social possibilities in the form of story and drama. When done so successfully, the science fiction writer’s work can offer value by contributing to the social discourse. Researching this unique position, between science, social relevance and storytelling, is at the heart of this work. Its objective is to articulate insights and conceptualizations for the considerations, actions and creative decisions required to accomplish this kind of a challenge. To do so I have written two science fiction TV pilot screenplays, an earlier version and a later version. In parallel, I have studied the subject of human enhancement both for its scientific aspect and its philosophical and social aspect, and also studied about the theory and practice of science fiction writing, with an emphasis on stories that deal with human enhancement and current science fiction TV series. The two lines of work inter-related and complemented each other. The study of human enhancement and science fiction took part in the progression of the writing from the initial screenplay to the final one, which is considered by me to be more satisfactory in achieving both a good representation of the 4 social and moral issues of human enhancement, and in fulfilling the dramatic potential of the subject. This dissertation includes the screenplays and other creative materials, preceded by a critical essay which describes the study of human enhancement and science fiction, and analyzes the development of the writing process leading up to the final screenplay. The insights gained from the research highlight the importance of the science fiction writer’s understanding of the technology he writes about (or the “novum” – the technological/scientific difference maker); creating a story premise which as a derivative of the technology; exploring the different moral, psychological and social aspects of the chosen technology and translating those to story conflicts and character motivations; and making story-world decisions that best serve the thematic issues the writer wants to convey. Keywords: Science fiction; Human enhancement; Creative writing; Screenwriting; Research-through-creation; Practice-led-research; TV series. 5 Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 4 Contents........................................................................................................................................... 6 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 10 Extended introduction: research approach and methodological framework............................. 15 The research question and its underlying disciplinary assumptions ....................................... 15 Theoretical assumptions to the research approach............................................................. 16 The TV series medium ........................................................................................................... 18 Science fiction as a field of theory and research .................................................................. 20 Philosophy and storytelling .................................................................................................. 22 Creative writing research .......................................................................................................... 25 The paradigm of creative writing research .......................................................................... 26 Creative writing research as an academic discipline ........................................................... 28 Methodologies of creative writing research ........................................................................ 32 The discipline of screenwriting ............................................................................................. 36 Screenwriting in the academic creative writing research field ........................................... 38 The research method ................................................................................................................ 40 Method .................................................................................................................................. 41 Conceptual