Science Fiction and Technophobia
FLM&MDA 112 (4.0 units) – Session I
Instructor: Shane Breitenstein
In the age of gene therapy, Google Glass, and self-driving cars, the line that separates humans from technology is blurring. Most see this as a technological revolution. Many fear a loss of control and individualism as new technologies dominate, rather than facilitate, our everyday lives. Science fiction films are unique in representing not only the hopes, but also anxieties and fears of this techno-future. Few genres reflect the Utopian orientation of their age so clearly, while also addressing social and political fears – or technophobia. Where does the human end and the machine begin? How does technology both empower, and subordinate, its users? What happens when technology falls into the wrong hands? This course provides a thematic introduction to the science fiction genre through an exploration of its dystopian concerns. We will survey such themes as: the virtual vs. the real, new technology and corporate surveillance, cyborgs and Artificial Intelligence (AI), technology in the domestic sphere, and bio-politics and weapons of mass destruction. Alongside critical essays and fiction that attend to technophobia, we will view a series of films ranging from Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983) and The Stepford Wives (Oz, 2004), to Blade Runner (Scott, 1982), Watchmen (Snyder, 2009) and Resident Evil (Anderson, 2002). These films and texts question how technology constitutes, and is opposed to, the human. Through them, we will analyze the impact of popular media on our political, economic, and psychic relationships to science and technology. We will ask: How do objects of popular culture impact our relationship to science and technology? How do they both influence, and are influenced by, an ideological context of technophobia? How is technophobia related to larger questions of capitalism, gender, race, sexuality and, above all, power? Prerequisite: FLM&MDA 85A.