Modern Science Fiction Films - Term Paper Example

Science Fiction films Science fiction films form a particularly useful body of film industry through which to examine the socio-cultural matrix dealing with super-weapons for three reasons. Science fiction films are consciously didactic. Each of its most prolific early practitioners used fiction to educate his audience; cinematographers are most interested in predicting possible uses for existing technology, while others frequently extrapolate technological or social possibilities. Many early stories that dealt with fantastic voyages or encounters with alien beings were disguised social criticism, produced in cultures that did not really expect to change. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, however, the pace of socio-cultural change accelerated, and the changes affected more classes of the population more dramatically than ever before. Thesis Technology, special effects, action, bugs and aliens, create a core of modern science fiction films and shade other aspects of these films. In modern science fiction films, man's power to control his environment has increased, especially through the applications of science, fiction moves from the heroic dimension to concern itself with the relationship between man and the power that is man's most important creation. Science fiction is the literature that takes technology seriously. It must deal with the relationship of man to his creation and with the combined power and responsibility that ensues. In Fritz Lang (1927) Metropolis, Joh Fredersen serves as an instructive paradigm: Joh Fredersen not only arrogates to himself the role of creator, but also botches his responsibility towards his creation, paying an enormous personal price for his hubris. From its generic inception, sf has been a literature questioning man's ability to use effectively the power he is so capable of creating (Gibson 1986). Very often this power is symbolized by some terrible weapon of destruction. If people are to change our sociopolitical behavior, they need to know the assumptions it rests upon, not what we "believe" to be true but what we actually do when we are not looking. Then, since the one thing that humans cannot do is not assume, we need to devise new assumptions to live by. As we have encoded the current assumptions in fiction, so we need to encode the new ones, to try them out as thought experiments, to make them "real" in our imagination, and then to adopt or reject them. This is not a call for "uplifting" or "moral" fiction, for self-conscious myth making, but for creative exploration of new possibilities in human relations. Following Robertson (2000), Science fiction's tendency to fetishise technology, particularly military technology, and its reliance on stock types of character and plot that are often flat and caricaturing, surely limits its engagement with any meaningful comprehension of the marginal, of Otherness (p. 29). Science fiction films show that if the invention is a weapon, the threat must come from an enemy, and a superweapon requires a superenemy. Human "progress" comes from a combination of scientific curiosity and hard work; it can be measured by technology. But Man can easily lose his humanity by misusing that very technology. Evolution depends on struggle; technological sin consists of laziness, of general hedonism and elimination of struggle. Man has evolved slowly, but he can devolve rapidly. Devolution can be prevented only by continuous effort (Gibson 1986). Man's physiological evolution parallels his sociocultural evolution. Aliens produce Evolution by arriving in our solar system at a time when only a few men remain, striding through science irresistibly with their many machines. Although men have long since given up war, they assume that the aliens are hostile and try to destroy them with mere atomic explosions. The aliens use disintegrating matter to wipe Man out, leaving only his machines. The examples of such films are Byron Haskin (1953): War of the worlds, George Lucas (1977): Star Wars and Fritz Lang (1927): Metropolis. The mechanical narrator of the story finds this appropriate, since man evolves less rapidly than do his machines and is less deadly. The surviving machines succeed in turning away the aliens, fill the solar system with their progeny, and eventually evolve to a "being of Force" that returns through time to leave this "fictitious" account proving the machines' superiority Though no single machine can do all that man can do, machines in the aggregate can do more than man (Sawyer and Seed 2002). They are calm, logical, and teachable, and therefore virtuous. But most of all, machines are the outward and visible sign of an invisible science. The only thing that is better than machine science is science that has progressed beyond the need for physical mechanisms. Science itself is unquestionably the greatest blessing of all. "Technology focuses our attitude to difference, and that because of this it is often the items of technology that have the most metaphorical potency in an SF text" (Robertson 2000, p. 147). Viewers concentrate on technology and weapons paying less attention to the context and characters development. In such films actions dominate as they attract attention and keep viewers in suspense till the end of the film (Gibson 1986). In science fiction films, humans are shown as insatiably curious, but quite lacking in common sense. Human nature boldly goes where no man has gone before and where angels fear to tread -- but the angels are generally right. At the same time, humans are shown as fearful. They demand control of their environment, including other humans, for their own safety. But they are not capable of properly handling the power this control requires; only God can do that (Sawyer and Seed 2002). The "fortunate fall," when Adam and Eve took "control" of knowledge, is, in the long run, our undoing. Control requires power that we are incapable of wielding, yet we continue to demand greater power to control the danger we have ourselves created by our demand for control. Human nature cannot stand temptation. Give humans the easy life, and they become lotus eaters. Thus the liberation of atomic energy (and despite the caveats of the scientists, such liberation was anticipated) and the virtually free power it would provide, allowing the ordinary citizen to afford an extraordinary diversity of labor-saving devices, could destroy humanity. hey further assume that the outcome of technological advance will be racial devolution and suggest that we are obligated to avoid the technological future to save humanity. In such films as Robert Wise's (1956): Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and Robert Zemeckis's (1997) Contact, human nature is seen as aggressive, treacherous, and warlike. Given the dangerous world people live in (and our isolationism emphasizes its dangerousness), conflict is inevitable; given our weakness (due to our "nice-guy" character) people must protect ourselves with superweapons. But superweapons mean greater danger; they can accidentally destroy their inventors, and what one side can produce the other side can duplicate. Whether we create the superweapon or not, we risk destruction. No wonder some stories posit the end of modern society and a return to the "green world" of the past. If science equals technology, which equals progress, which is good by definition, while simultaneously exposing us to the risk of devolution or destruction by superweapons, which is clearly bad, then we are caught in the modern paradox: we cannot live with it and we cannot get rid of it. Science is power -- and power is a two-edged sword (Sawyer and Seed 2002). Powerful weapons, including powerful allies, make dictatorships possible; even more powerful weapons must be used to oppose them. Ridley Scott's (1979): Alien demonstrates that the effectiveness of an advanced weapon depends mainly on the ability of the people in charge to perceive and incorporate its special advantages (Telotte, 2001). This may call for a radical change of assumptions about what is and what is not possible in any given situation. Many of the high-ranking advisors to the congressional committees showed startling failures of tactical imagination. This is a good example of a familiar observation: it is not hard to convince people to stop doing something that obviously does not work; it is much harder to get people to change practices that almost work or that worked pretty well before circumstances changed. Admirals and generals who saw the atomic bomb as just one more "blockbuster" delivering a little extra "bang" per bomb and demanding conventional methods of delivery were perhaps unimaginative but not out of the ordinary. And, like many ordinary people, they probably did not read science fiction (Sawyer and Seed 2002). In science fiction films, aliens and bugs drown down other aspects and stick attention of viewers to ugly aces and unnatural settings. Science fiction has always seen itself as the educator of the public in matters technological, but this education has been indirect, contradictory, and frequently ill-informed, as seems perfectly appropriate to literature. Many science fiction writers who felt somehow justified in their genre by the actuality of the atomic bomb simultaneously felt guilty about their role in its realization (Westfahl, 2000). This is also appropriate; as we have seen, the thrust of science fiction has been not only to extrapolate the possibility of atomic power but also to reify the assumptions that scientists and politicians alike followed in its development and use. Furthermore, and. this is most clearly seen in the reaction of scientists and nonscientists alike after Hiroshima, Armageddon had been made real enough in fiction that few had trouble assimilating it to the postnuclear world (Telotte, 2001). In the midst of technological revolution, one thing we expect to remain stable is what we call "human nature." While fiction must deal with species-general experience (that is, it can deal with all situations and conditions possible for man as a physical being to experience and can present these experiences as causing physiologically appropriate reactions and sensations), it is both culture-dependent and culture-specific. Although they form no certain theories about human beings, their discussions acutely penetrate the American preoccupation with excreta and the ritual that surrounds their culturally approved disposal, while metaphorically connecting this with the elimination of humanity (Westfahl, 2000). Instead of seeing humanity as coming in two hereditary forms, the nurture model divides man internally. It assumes that every human has a dual nature: body versus soul or mind versus emotions. One part of man aims at the good, but it is constantly subverted by its baser self (Westfahl, 2000). Thus even those who believe man to be basically good can explain why human beings get themselves into so much trouble, why they so often act badly: either man is a good animal instinctively and intuitively able to act rightly, but frequently misled by his inhuman rationality, or he is a rational being frequently misled by his instincts and emotions. The aliens themselves, with their weird technology and their satellite-dish faces, seem to embody a particular, technological metaphor for maleness; just as their spaceship, a piece of technology, is no more of a 'world machine' than the machinery of patriarchy (Roberts 2000, p. 38). Feeling that control of the situation is impossible, other writers focus on controlling the destruction caused by atomic war, a concept that could be presented as feasible before both sides had overkill capabilities. Many films show the horrible results of carelessness, contrasting a "prepared" city on one side of the river with its slothful sister on the other. Fiction has reflected these contradictions, but instead of attempting either to analyze or to resolve them, it has helped to fix them in place. At least in part, this is due to the nature of fiction itself. Writers depend on excitement and conflict to interest their readers, and war makes an exciting, readily believable plot. It can provide the explanation for any number of subsequent developments, as we have seen in this analysis, including some that are frankly magical or the result of wishful thinking (Westfahl, 2000). The belief that war is a necessary stimulus to human progress helps to maintain war as a viable plot device. Underlying this belief is the assumption that inevitable conflict exists either between "good" and "bad" people or between the "good" and "bad" elements within each individual. Since this conflict comes with the territory, it must have evolutionary survival value. Explaining that value in the context of atomic war takes creative maneuvering. Many of the fictions assume that humans must struggle to progress, and that solving problems may create a world in which struggle, and thus human progress, ends forever. But this assumption, tacitly continued in the nuclear age, runs counter to observed reality: after nuclear Armageddon, struggle must take place in a poisoned biosphere, in a world bereft of its Edenic potential (Westfahl and Slusser,. 2002). Critics admit that "We now solve our problems or die. Social evolution cannot compete with environmental devolution" (Westfahl and Slusser,. 2002, p. 101). If the scientists are greedy instead of benevolent, peace may seem even more ambiguous. Vernor Vinge The Peace War ( 1984) shows the effect of an antiwar weapon in dictatorial hands. When an atomic war is stopped by technology that locks every atomic explosion safely in a time-suspending "bobble," one might expect that peace and progress would result. Instead, the Peace Authority bans vehicles, power-intensive work, and all biological research, even to cure war-related diseases. A status quo of peace imposed by superior force or alien guile is little different from that of mutual assured destruction. The more effective the control, the more we will contest it or risk losing our humanity. Without war to prove our human strength of purpose, we might not even be able to recognize ourselves. Yet if atomic war should occur, we may not be here to recognize. In a very real sense, peace imposed by force or by an unstable balance of power provides no resolution to our scenario. It is a way of maintaining ambiguity, of refusing an ending (Telotte, 2001). The impressive scenarios of science fiction movies make assumptions "real" even while it helps hide them in cultural familiarity. Caught in contradictory assumptions about ourselves and history, viewers feel helpless to act. Living in existential shame, we feel victimized by our world and explain it away rather than modeling it as a process we can participate in. Living in existential guilt, we assume that we know how to "win" against ourselves. Fiction grows from these cultural assumptions, organizes our experiences, and helps to mold them. In fiction, cinematographers reflect and illuminate our history; through it, we may also find ways to alter our assumptions. Although the weapons could destroy all life in the world, no halfway measure is allowed or even seriously considered. Technology and aliens attract attention of viewers and diminish the importance of other elements. Viewers just neglect plot development and characters development concentrated on actions and impressive settings of new worlds. The radioactive dust defends a curiously apathetic society: we see neither popular agitation against nor enthusiasm for the weapon nor dismay at the socially disruptive measures (including the banning of all military and commercial air travel) taken to control it. Given a society composed of fallen humans, the only choice lies between control imposed by an elite (which will stultify progress) and chaos. Bibliography Gibson, William 1986, Burning Chrome, Harper Collins, London. Roberts, Adam 2000, Science Fiction, Routledge, London. L Sawyer, A., Seed, D. 2002, Speaking Science Fiction: Dialogues and Interpretations Liverpool University Press. Telotte, J. P. 2001, Science Fiction Film. Cambridge University Press,. Westfahl, G. 2000, Space and beyond: The Frontier Theme in Science Fiction. Greenwood Press. Westfahl, G., Slusser,. G. 2002, No Cure for the Future: Disease and Medicine in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Greenwood Press. Read More