They Walk among Us

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Megan Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
The Body ◽  
Racial Passing ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
The Earth ◽  
External Threat ◽  
Science Fiction Films

This chapter focuses on science fiction films that featured aliens passing as humans and examines how they tapped into the fears and anxieties about politics and issues of identity in postwar America. In films such as Invaders from Mars, Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, and The Day the Earth Stood Still, friendly neighbors might be alien invaders pretending to be humans. These Hollywood films were of two main categories: those concerned with the external threat of alien invasions, and those that deal with the internal threat of aliens who infiltrated the earth and passed for human. The chapter suggests that aliens passing for human brought to the fore the connections between anxiety about racial passing, Communism, and subversive gender or sexual identities.

scholarly journals The Major Tritone Progression in Recent Hollywood Science Fiction Films

2006 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Great Distance ◽  
Voice Leading ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Harmonic Language ◽  
Science Fiction Films

In the 2002 filmTreasure Planet,composer James Newton Howard accompanies the primary shot of the titular orb with an undulation between two major triads a tritone apart. I offer three approaches to understanding the appropriateness of this image/music pairing. First, I present several scenes from recent Hollywood films that conspicuously combine this triadic progression with settings of, or objects from, outer space. Second, I relay ways in which the intrinsic harmonic and voice-leading characteristics of this triadic progression invoke the concepts of great distance, ambiguity, and unfamiliarity. Third, I conclude with a more thorough study of Howard’s harmonic language in the score forTreasure Planet,suggesting that this progression and the scene it accompanies represents the culmination of musical and visual/narrative processes, respectively.

W cieniu radiacji. Seksualizacje bomby atomowej w kulturze popularnej lat 40. i 50. w Stanach Zjednoczonych

2017 ◽  
pp. 33-41
Author(s):  
Piotr Urbanowicz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Cinema ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
Science Fiction Films

The aim of the article is to present a phenomenon of the sexualization of an atomic bomb in the popular culture of the 1940s and the 1950s in the United States. On the basis of sociological and cultural studies, the author lists the functions of this phenomenon. Furthermore, he uses the examples of press reports and popular cinema to indicate that the sexualization of the atomic bomb resulted from fear of sterilization and assimilation of soldiers coming back from the front. The analysis concerns the film I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958). The author proves that science fiction films conceptualize social concerns, and accustom the viewers with atomic tension by means of appropriate narratives.

scholarly journals Human-Alien Encounters in Science Fiction: A Postcolonial Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-203
Author(s):  
Borbála Bökös
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
The Body ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
James Cameron ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Science Fiction Films ◽  
Abel Ferrara ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract An (un)conventional encounter between humans and alien beings has long been one of the main thematic preoccupations of the genre of science fiction. Such stories would thus include typical invasion narratives, as in the case of the three science fiction films I will discuss in the present paper: the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956; Philip Kaufman, 1978; Abel Ferrara, 1993), The Host (Andrew Niccol, 2013), and Avatar (James Cameron, 2009). I will examine the films in relation to postcolonial theories, while attempting to look at the ways of revisiting one’s history and culture (both alien and human) in the films’ worlds that takes place in order to uncover and heal the violent effects of colonization. In my reading of the films I will shed light on the specific processes of identity formation (of an individual or a group), and the possibilities of individual and communal recuperation through memories, rites of passages, as well as hybridization. I will argue that the colonized human or alien body can serve either as a mediator between the two cultures, or as an agent which fundamentally distances two separate civilizations, thus irrevocably bringing about the loss of identity, as well as the lack of comprehension of cultural differences.

Patrick Moore, Arthur C. Clarke and ‘British Outer Space’ in the mid 20th century

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Dunnett
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Audience Participation ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Television Programme ◽  
Human Destiny

This article seeks to explore a notion of ‘British outer space’ in the mid 20th century with reference to the British Interplanetary Society and the works of Patrick Moore and Arthur C. Clarke. Geographies of outer space have been examined following early work by Denis Cosgrove on the Apollo space photographs. Cosgrove’s work has encouraged a growing body of work that seeks to examine both the ‘Earth from space’ perspective as well as its reciprocal, ‘space from Earth’. This article aligns itself with the latter viewpoint, in attempting to define a national culture of ‘British outer space’. This is found to have an important connection with the British Interplanetary Society, founded in 1933 near Liverpool, which went on to influence the works of Patrick Moore, who edited the magazine Spaceflight and presented the television programme The Sky at Night, and Arthur C. Clarke, who became known as a science fiction writer through his early novels in the 1950s. The themes of audience participation and human destiny in outer space are examined in a close reading of these two case studies, and further engagement with cultures of outer space in geography is encouraged.

scholarly journals The Vision of an Axe. Dostoevsky and Astronautics

2021 ◽  
pp. 124-152
Author(s):  
Ilya Yu. Vinitsky
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Artificial Satellite ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Literary Origins

This essay explores the scientific and literary origins of the image of an axe thrown into outer space to orbit the earth, as it appears in the chapter “The Devil. The Vision of Ivan Fyodorovich” in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Did Dostoevsky anticipate the idea of an artificial satellite, as many critics and journalists argue? How were science (in this case astronomy) and literature connected in his mind? How did Dostoevsky’s scientific and creative imagination work in general? The author shows that Dostoevsky’s “prophetic” reference to a sputnik was rooted in popular articles and textbooks about Newton’s mechanics and in Marko Vovchok’s (Maria Vilinskaya’s) translation of Jules Verne’s science fiction novel Around the Moon (“Autour de la Lune”), published in The Russian Herald (Russkii vestnik) in 1869. The novel relates the chronicle of a voyage of brave researchers inside a cannonball that was fired out of a giant space gun. The essay reconstructs the trajectory of Verne’s image of a manmade satellite in Russian literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

scholarly journals The Jodoverse: Cosmic cloning of classical geopolitics

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-556
Author(s):  
Vladimir Ajzenhamer
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
Infinite Space ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Initial Assumption

The paper is an attempt at geopolitical contextualization and realpolitik reading of comic works by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The focus of the analysis is on the so-called ?Jodoverse? - a segment of Jodorowsky?s opus which includes three great science-fiction sagas - ?The Incal?, ?The Saga of the Metabarons? and ?Technopriests?. These works, which can be defined as ?space operas? in terms of genre, vividly evoke a futuristic vision of one of the possible cosmic futures of humanity. This paper aims to map those motives in this fictional universe that draw inspiration from the tradition of classical geopolitics, i.e., the practice of political realism. The author?s initial assumption is that the Jodoverse is designed to function as a (popular-cultural) reflection of earthly geopolitical principles in the mirror of outer space and that, therefore, the depiction of astropolitics in the works of Jodorowsky is nothing but cloning of realpolitik in infinite space above the earth?s orbit. In order to confirm this assumption, the author will use the geopolitical and astropolitical concepts of Karl Schmidt and Everett Dolman as a key to unravelling the secrets of the Jodoverse. For that purpose, Schmidt?s concept of the nomos of the earth will be used, as well as the teaching on technological determinism which is present in the works of both theorists. By applying these concepts to Jodorowsky?s comics, the author will try to prove how the ideas of classical geopolitics have their counterparts in the cosmic phantasms of this genius of the ninth art.

scholarly journals The Vision of an Axe. Dostoevsky and Astronautics

2021 ◽  
pp. 124-152
Author(s):  
Ilya Yu. Vinitsky
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Artificial Satellite ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Literary Origins

This essay explores the scientific and literary origins of the image of an axe thrown into outer space to orbit the earth, as it appears in the chapter “The Devil. The Vision of Ivan Fyodorovich” in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Did Dostoevsky anticipate the idea of an artificial satellite, as many critics and journalists argue? How were science (in this case astronomy) and literature connected in his mind? How did Dostoevsky’s scientific and creative imagination work in general? The author shows that Dostoevsky’s “prophetic” reference to a sputnik was rooted in popular articles and textbooks about Newton’s mechanics and in Marko Vovchok’s (Maria Vilinskaya’s) translation of Jules Verne’s science fiction novel Around the Moon (“Autour de la Lune”), published in The Russian Herald (Russkii vestnik) in 1869. The novel relates the chronicle of a voyage of brave researchers inside a cannonball that was fired out of a giant space gun. The essay reconstructs the trajectory of Verne’s image of a manmade satellite in Russian literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Dreams of the Earth and Sky

Leonardo ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-146
Author(s):  
Olesya Turkina
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Soviet Space ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Scientific Ideas ◽  
Technological Modeling ◽  
Interplanetary Flight

This article examines how artists, writers and filmmakers inspired by scientific ideas imagined space flight and how engineers and scientists were inspired by these fantasies. The first section discusses Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's impact on images of interplanetary flight and the promotion of outer space in the early twentieth century. The second considers the emergence of popular science films about space as conceived by director Pavel Klushantsev as well as the role of artist Yuri Shvets in the Soviet space epic and the impact of technological modeling on science fiction in art. Finally, the author surveys the “space work” of artists-cum-inventors Bulat Galeyev and Vyacheslav Koleychuk.

Cosmic Plots in Early Soviet Culture: Flights of Fancy to the Moon and Mars

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-199
Author(s):  
Michael G. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Soviet Culture ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Real Science ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Soviet Science Fiction ◽  
Soviet Experience

This article explores two classics of Soviet science fiction – Konstantin Tsiolkovskii’s Beyond the Earth (1918) and Aleksei Tolstoi’s Aelita (1923) – in their related historical contexts. Both had their origins in the popular nineteenth-century “cosmic romance,” owing to their staple characters, settings, and plots. These were extraordinary adventures into the heavens, modern signposts of how the fantastic was becoming real. Yet both novels also became leading texts in the genre of Stalinist Socialist Realism, stories that made “fairy tales come true.” Tsiolkovskii and Tolstoi both appealed to the Bolshevik Revolution as a radical break in time here on earth, much as they predicted that the rocket would become a radical new means to reach beyond into outer space. They centered their stories on real science and technology, articles of comprehension and anticipation. They created characters that revealed the utopian potential of human beings to create new regimes of equality and freedom. Part inheritance from abroad, part innovation at home, the cosmic romance in their hands became a successful medium to situate and justify the Soviet experience.

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