scholarly journals Introduction: Ethical Questions in Contemporary Science Fiction Films

2014 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Sylvie Magerstädt
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Science Fiction Films

scholarly journals China Whispers: The Symbolic, Economic, and Political Presence of China in Contemporary American Science Fiction Film

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-161
Author(s):  
Kenneth Longden
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Western Science ◽  
The West ◽  
Yellow Peril ◽  
American Science ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Science Fiction Films ◽  
Contemporary Film ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract China has long been present in Western science fiction, but largely through notions of Orientalism and depictions as the 'Yellow Peril'. However, with China's new ascendancy and modernization over the last 15 years, along with its investment and collaboration with Hollywood in particular, contemporary film in general, and contemporary science fiction in particular, has embraced this new China in ways hitherto unseen before. This essay examines three contemporary western/American science fiction films which each represent and construct China in slightly different ways, and in ways which reveal the West, and Hollywood's reappraisal of the relationship with China and its emerging 'Soft Power.'.

scholarly journals Dirbtinis intelektas moterišku kūnu filmuose Ex Machina ir Ji

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 69-90
Author(s):  
Justina Žiūraitė-Pupelė
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Science Fiction Films

The article explores how artificial intelligence is constructed in a female body and showcases the boundaries between human and technological traits, as well as the relationship between human beings and technology. The article defines the notion of artificial intelligence and discusses how artificial intelligence is portrayed in science fiction films. The article does not attempt to provide new theoretical insights into artificial intelligence but, instead, to show how artificial intelligence is characterised in the context of modern science fiction films. Two contemporary science fiction films, which focus on the artificial intelligence in the female body, are analysed: Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014) and Spike Jonze’s Her (2013). The analysis of the films showcases the blurred lines between being a human and being a robot: AI in the female body is portrayed as having adequate cognitive abilities and an ability to experience or to realistically imitate various mental states. The AI embodiment found in the films explores different narratives: the anthropomorphic body (Ex Machina) motivates to get to know the world and thus expands one’s experience, while the partial embodiment (Her) “programs” intellectual actions and development beyond the human body. Ex Machina highlights the anti-humanity of the female robot: another (human) life is devalued in order to pursue a goal. On the contrary, Her highlights the hyper-humanity of the operating system: continuous improvements exceed the boundaries of communication with other people.

scholarly journals Afraid of the Dark and the Light: Visceralizing Ecocide in The Road and Hell

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-56
Author(s):  
Alexa Weik von Mossner
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
The Road ◽  
Ecological Changes ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Science Fiction Films ◽  
The One ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
The Relationship

The essay is concerned with the ways in which contemporary science fiction films explore the future subjectivities and societies that may result from radical ecological changes, looking at two pertinent examples from two different national traditions: John Hillcoat’s 2009 film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-win­ning novel The Road (2006), and one of the very few German-Swiss science fiction films with an environmental theme, Tim Fehlbaum’s Hell (2011). It is particularly interested in the relationship between the films’ imagined ecological spaces and the actions of the protagonists of each film on the one hand, and in the relationship between these futuristic diegetic spaces and the contemporary real-life ecological spaces that “play” them on the other hand. Together with the performances of the human actors and the tension and suspense built by the narratives, it argues, the spectacle and insinuated agency of these ecological spaces are centrally responsible for the films’ emotional force and for their ability to engage viewers in stories of global ecocide and human survival.   Resumen               El ensayo analiza cómo las películas de ciencia ficción exploran las sociedades y subjetividades futuras que pueden surgir de cambios ecológicos radicales, atendiendo a dos ejemplos relevantes de dos tradiciones nacionales diferentes: la adaptación cinematográfica de 2009 de la novela de Cormac McCarthy The Road (2006), ganadora del premio Pulitzer, dirigida por John Hillcoat; y una de las muy escasas películas de ciencia ficción germano-suizas de  temática medioambiental, Hell (2011) de Tim Fehlbaum. Se presta especial interés a dos aspectos: por un lado,  la relación entre los espacios ecológicos imaginados en las películas y las acciones de los protagonistas de cada película; y por otro lado,  la relación entre estos espacios diegéticos futuristas y los espacios ecológicos reales que los representan. Junto con la interpretación de los actores humanos y la tensión y el suspense que construyen las narraciones, el espectáculo y la agencia insinuada de estos espacios ecológicos son en gran medida responsables de la fuerza emocional de las películas y de su habilidad  para implicar a la audiencia en historias de ecocidio global y supervivencia humana.

scholarly journals Through a (First) Contact Lens Darkly: Arrival, Unreal Time and Chthulucinema

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. Fleming ◽  
William Brown
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Contact Lens ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Future ◽  
Nature Of Time ◽  
Science Fiction Films ◽  
First Contact

Science fiction is often held up as a particularly philosophical genre. For, beyond actualising mind-experiment-like fantasies, science fiction films also commonly toy with speculative ideas, or else engineer encounters with the strange and unknown. Denis Villeneuve's Arrival (2016) is a contemporary science fiction film that does exactly this, by introducing Lovecraft-esque tentacular aliens whose arrival on Earth heralds in a novel, but ultimately paralysing, inhuman perspective on the nature of time and reality. This article shows how this cerebral film invites viewers to confront a counterintuitive model of time that at once recalls and reposes what Gilles Deleuze called a “third synthesis” of time, and that which J. M. E. McTaggart named the a-temporal “C series” of “unreal” time. We finally suggest that Arrival's a-temporal conception of the future as having already happened can function as a key to understanding the fate of humanity as a whole as we pass from the anthropocene, in which humans have dominated the planet, to the “chthulucene,” in which humans no longer exist on the planet at all.

Biology and Manners

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Us ◽  
Main Series ◽  
Current Concerns ◽  
The Red Queen

This volume is a new collection of scholarly essays on the US science fiction and fantasy writer Lois McMaster Bujold. The collection argues for the significant contributions Bujold’s works make to feminist and queer thought, disability studies, and fan studies. In addition, it suggests the importance of Bujold to contemporary American literature. The volume continues the establishment of Bujold as an important author of contemporary science fiction and fantasy. It argues that her corpus spans the distance between two full arcs of US feminism and has anticipated or responded to several of its current concerns in ways that invite or even require theoretical exploration. As well as papers on earlier work in the main series (the Vorkosigan Saga and the ‘Worlds of the Five Gods’ novels The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls), the collection also presents work on recent publications such as The Sharing Knife sequence; the ‘Penric and Desdemona’ novellas; and the recent Vorkosigan Saga novel Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. The collection deepens feminist research in Bujold studies by incorporating queer and disability studies perspectives; and includes historiographic retracing of scholarship on Bujold’s work.

“In search of our better selves”: Totem Transfer Narratives and Indigenous Futurities

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dallas Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
The Self ◽  
Intergenerational Transfer ◽  
Canadian Literature ◽  
Indigenous Knowledges ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Sustainable Futures

Much contemporary science fiction urges us to focus on eco-activism and sustainable futures in order to prevent environmental catastrophe. From a critical Indigenous and anticolonial perspective, however, the question becomes “for whom are these futures sustainable”? Set in a nondescript desert dystopia, George Miller's film Mad Max: Fury Road 2015 alludes to the westerns of yesteryear and the Australian “outback”—spaces coded as menacing in their resistance to being tamed by settler-colonial interests. This article charts how Miller's film, while preoccupied with issues pertaining to global warming and ecological collapse, replicates and reifies settler replacement narratives, or what Canadian literature scholar Margery Fee has referred to as “totem transfer” narratives (1987). In these narratives, ultimately the “natives” transfer their knowledges and then disappear from view, helping white settlers remedy the self-created ills that currently threaten their worlds and enabling them to inherit the land. In the second half, I also consider how Indigenous futurist texts offer decolonizing potentials that refute the replacement narratives that persist in settler-colonial contexts. In particular, I examine how Indigenous cultural production emphasizes the importance of the intergenerational transfer of Indigenous knowledges and refuses the hermeneutic of reconciliation that seeks to discipline Indigenous futures in the service of a settler-colonial present.

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