Your Film Professor

To my mind, the science fiction genre is just simply the most important of all genres because it speaks to the human condition in the deepest way possible and in every way possible, more so than any other genre I think. I am especially informed by science fiction scholar Darko Suvin’s notion of “estrangement,” the deeply informing idea that science fiction can “estrange” us from our own sense of reality, allowing us to see our reality in a different way, to see it for what it really is and/or to think about alternative ways of being that might not be as compelling had we not been allowed to glimpse these “estranging” science fiction representations/alternative realities. As what I say here suggests, while I enjoy escapist science fiction films as much as anyone, my personal favorites are more cerebral and deep. One other point of emphasis: I am not ranking these films according to what I think are the “best” science fiction films or most important, but just according to my personal favorites.

***Spoilers alert!***

(20) The Skin I Live In (2011, Pedro Almodóvar)

(Just a special note that of all the films on this list, this is the one blurb that I would HIGHLY recommend you NOT read until you see the film; part of the power of this film is in not knowing what is coming!)

In a very interesting twist on the “mad scientist” scenario Pedro Almodóvar (kind of a “mad scientist” himself) has “mad scientist” Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) “create” a transgender woman, though the catch here is that this transformation is against Vincente’s will and we don’t know this fact until well into the film (add in this classic science fiction-horror trope: “Vera’s” new skin is partially made from pig blood, in effect making “her” “post-human”!). The ramifications of these strategies of delaying this revelation are deep and complex, Almodóvar forcing us to constantly revise our own subjectivity as we slowly discover the horrifying “truth” of what we are seeing. In short, this film fantastically spins one’s head with all of the transgressive potentialities of this figuration of transgenderism! Only Almodóvar could cook up something so subversive!

(19) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931, Rouben Mamoulian)

In my view, this adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel is still the best version. A film ahead of its time (in part due to being made before the notorious stifling Hays Code kicked in—this film has some really risqué moments!), it potently realizes Stevenson’s famous exploration of our repressed nature, what film studies scholar Robin Wood divides into “basic repression” and “surplus repression.” One of the complexities of this version is in giving us both of these repressive parts of ourselves, our primitive (prehistoric) self, that animal side of us that, as Wood so stresses, we need to repress – that is healthy for us to repress – so as to get beyond our most primitive self, and “surplus repression,” those natural elements of ourselves that are unhealthy for us to repress, e.g., sexual desire, women’s sexual desire, “deviant” sexuality, and so on. Most tantalizing is how Rouben Mamoulian has Jekyll (Fredric March) and prostitute Ivy (Miriam Hopkins) represent in so many ways characteristics that are a threat to the dominant (oppressive-repressive) ideology, e.g., Jekyll transgresses the elitist decorum of high society (Jekyll offers up an “alternative ideology” to existing class superiority and elitist/tradition dogma) and Ivy transgresses on “normal” female (suppressed) sexuality, her overall free (sexual) spirit behavior subversively transgressing the norms of society. Of course, the glaring emphasis is on Jekyll’s own forced suppressed sexuality, e.g., he clearly bristles at being subjected to suppressing his sexual desires, his “vulgar” (for the time period and for the decorum of his elite environment anyway) expression of verbalizing this sexual frustration distressing the elites around him. The film itself offers up commentaries on the Real of normative (patriarchal, phallocentric, elitist, capitalistic) ideologies, which we especially get with Jekyll’s (not Hyde’s, Jekyll’s!) patriarchal, phallocentric, toxic masculinity monstrousness, him seeing Ivy as an object he can consume. Notable too is the crucial ingredient of the class thread that runs throughout this film, the way that the film is a commentary on the extreme class disparities in society. Truly, a film ahead of its time.

(18) THX 1138 (1971, George Lucas)

I have to say that it is just so hard to believe that the George Lucas of Star Wars fame made this film, a film that is to my mind, just so prescient and deep and fascinating. I enjoy the Star Wars films but get enrichment from THX 1138. I can’t do this film justice in a (long!) blurb – to my mind, this film is just so deep and prescient and I will do a full blown analysis of it someday – but here are to my mind the film’s essentials:

The Mechanization (Dehumanization) of Humanity: The whole opening sequence of THX 1138 establishes the dehumanizing sensibility of this future dystopia, a future based on an absolute bottom line of productivity and profit. In this context, then, the emphasis on computers, numbers, monitors etc. is not just about how humans are controlled and homogenized (all in the name of productivity and profit) but rather that becomes a consequence of this world’s agenda of an absolute mechanization (automation) of everything, again, in the name of productivity and profit. In this sense, the human element – which entails all that is contrary to this, all that works against an absolute productivity and profit systemization, e.g., emotions, relationships, intimacy, “self-expression,” identity (individuality), self-actualization – must be utterly drained from the system, which, in turn, is reflected by the “sterile” environment that Lucas creates, the sources of homogenization (e.g., the same clothes, the shaved heads), the “sterile” color white, the numbering of every facet of life, including human bodies, and so on. Like the best dystopias, the message here is clear: When we – or, rather, the powers-that-be (transnational corporate power, globalized institutional powers) – automate, technologize our selfs, we, in film and media studies scholar J.P. Telotte’s terms, “de-realize” ourselves, create an existential dystopia of self where we in effect cease to be–cease to be alive, cease to have a future, a crucial message in this film.

Hidden Omniscient Entity: In one of the most prescient threads in the film, Lucas gives us an allegorical “head” of state that speaks to the most troubling aspects of our world today. First, I think we are given numerous hints that this is a computer/AI controlled world, which of course via other computer/AI controlling regimes in other films (e.g., most prominently, The Matrix and The Terminator films) we know how that ends up. The numerous references to automated responses, computer screens, numbers (virtually everything is numbered), the “bottom line” (logic) sensibility that seems to drive this society, the behind-the-scenes images of computer banks, etc., the police droids (suggesting not only that they are used for enforcement but are an integral part of reinforcement of programming and/or actually programming, as we see that they seem to be the main surrogate “parent” figures for children!), and so on. In at least one reading, I would argue that it doesn’t really matter who is in charge and in fact it may be purposeful to keep it vague; that is, in the 70s, many films were made that suggested a kind of “everywhere” but “nowhere” power that oversaw us (the key film here is the very interesting The Parallax View), which has only gotten more ingrained, in the sense that as the world has become more and more transnationalized (literally, a super rich class that doesn’t belong to any one country but runs the world via various institutional and corporate power mechanisms) we can’t actually see who is running the show. The consequence of this are deep and troubling: When one doesn’t know who is in charge – who to rebel against – and if one feels that the controlling powers are everywhere and nowhere, it makes resistance seem impossible.

(17) The Creation of the Humanoids (1962, Wesley Barry)

The Creation of the Humanoids (1962, Wesley Barry) is a strange little film, purported to be Andy Warhol‘s favorite film, though as far as I can find, there is no actual proof of this widely repeated claim, so I have no idea where it came from or if this claim is true. (If anyone can source this claim, I would love to know about it!) If it really was Warhol’s favorite film, I can see why, this curio film really astounded me.

Now, I have to warn you: The Creation of the Humanoids is an extremely low budget film and is just way too talky; the film is basically just a series of long winded conversations so it really tests one’s patience at times. However, to my mind, one’s patience and labor is rewarded with (for the time period especially) some really interesting examinations and metaphorical uses of artificial intelligence (AI), uncommon for AI films, even today.

For more of my thoughts on this wacky film, check out my blog post on it.

(16) A Clockwork Orange (1971, Stanley Kubrick)

For me, A Clockwork Orange is easily the most difficult Stanley Kubrick film to watch. The images of violation to women is disturbing to say the least and just in general, the film is just so dang abrasive. But, as I tell my students all the time, there are filmmakers/artists who contribute to the ugliness of the world and then there are filmmakers/artists who reveal the ugliness of the world and then get at the root causes of this ugliness. I would strongly argue that Kubrick falls into the latter category. Of course, the scenes of violation are arguably necessary just to accentuate our deeply felt repulsion of Alex (Malcolm McDowell), which, in turn, gets at one of the often cited reasons for why this film is just so important: Having repugnant Alex in turn “violated” (he is subjected to a mind experiment where his cognition is altered) tests our human rights principles of never stripping an individual’s “free will” from him or her no matter how monstrous the individual. By doing that, we become in effect “rapists” ourselves, violating Others for the often cited reason that the ends justify the means, or, that “criminals” (or at least the most detestable “criminals”) no longer have human rights and thus their “ends” no longer matter. This element in the film is indeed quite potent, especially in terms of how Kubrick plays it out in the film, forcing us to unbelievably see Alex’s humanity as he is reduced to a helpless “victim” of Others’ torture of him. In this way, Kubrick reveals that even the very worst monsters are at bottom still “human” even if their humanity stems not from them but rather as they signify humanity in the abstract, e.g., in seeing Alex suffer we see not Alex anymore but a generic human being, making the torture of him by otherwise good human beings feel monstrous, e.g., reveal how monstrous such deeds are.

Having said all that, for me, the deeper element in this film lies in Kubrick’s examination of the root causes of the objectification of – and violence against – women, not to mention that he explores the root causes of the monstrousness of Alex himself and the (phallocentric, patriarchal) institutions that undergird society. In his own sardonic way, Kubrick reveals this root cause via an abundance of phallic symbols in the films, many of which are indeed penis shaped, which, by the way, need not be the case (e.g., a phallic object need not be shaped in the shape of a penis). In this context, again, to my mind, what makes this film utterly radical is in its contention of just how destructive this phallic drive is in our society/western culture. Much like he does in Dr. Strangelove, I would argue that Kubrick here is also saying that society is built upon this destructive phallic (patriarchal, hypermasculine, phallocentric) power, from religion (the snake reference, the dancing phallic Jesuses, the phallic references in the Bible, the phallic mural, the patriarchal priest) to science (and its castrating treatment) to institutional control (the prison system) to the political apparatus and its castrating power (e.g., castrating Alex), all of which by the way take on as their power the ideological program of “punishment” and control and violation rather than rehabilitation. In effect, then, Alex and his droogies are merely reflecting a phallic power that incubated them to their present state. The other element here is how this phallic drive utterly objectifies and dehumanizes women, as seen of course in the Kordova Milkbar but also seen in the décor and paintings of other spaces and of course the actions of Alex and his droogies, rape being also less about sex than about phallic power and humiliation (as it always is). The ending moment especially punctuates all of this: Alex, Dim, and Georgie all retain their viscous self, but now it is channeled for the needs of the “state,” making them arguably more dangerous than they were before, because now they have state power to give them cover and sanction their violence. In this way, even though I think Alex is essentially the same person at the end, in some ways he is not. I would argue that the system – the prison system, the Ludivico Treatment, the political machinations – make his maliciousness something more mature, weighted, and dangerous. I base this on his fantasies: In his earlier fantasies, the images he fantasized about were essentially about him getting pleasure from violence or being violent; in his last fantasy image, he imagines himself on stage with the world applauding his debauchery, a kind of elevated sense of his position in this new world of politics and power.

(15) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, George Miller)

First of all, no one can stage an action sequence with automobiles like George Miller can, and he is at the top of his game with Mad Max Fury Road. Second, this film is just a wonder to behold, so beautiful to look at, with exquisite use of color, incredible — vibrant, eye popping — compositions, and just a breathtaking vision – Miller creates a world that feels authentic. But, for me, the completion of this film’s greatness – in my view, vastly surpassing Miller’s original Mad Max trilogy – is its deep (political) commentary. The film’s grim dystopian landscape is both a grim real indictment on the nature of humanity – er, well, men (more on this in a moment) – and at that same time, an allegorical message/indictment on what caused this dystopian nightmare future. That “men” bit is a serious thing since it seems that Miller is pointing at men as the culprit for our world turning sour. At one point, the escapee women verbally attack Nux (Nicholas Hoult) and we get this telling exchange:

Nux: “He is the one…who grabbed the sun.”

Splendid: “Look how slick he’s fooled you war boy.”

Capable: “He’s a lying old man.”

Nux: “By his hand…we’ll be lifted up.”

Splendid: “That’s why we have his logo seared on our backs! Breeding stock! Battle Fodder!”

Nux: “No, I am awaited!”

Capable: “You’re an old man’s ‘Battle Fodder’!”

Splendid: “Killing everyone…and everything.”

Nux: “We’re not to blame!”

Splendid: “Then who killed the world?”

Who indeed. Based on who the women are attacking and charging, and based on the fact that virtually all of the baddies I think are men and all of our heroes are women, excepting Max (Tom Hardy) and Nux, Miller does indeed seem to be targeting men. What really punctuates this dynamic for me is when Furiosa (Charlize Theron) first meets the Vuvalini and one of them spots Nux and Max, says, eyeing them suspiciously, “The men, who are they?” Furiosa assures her that “they are reliable,” the suggestion being that most men are not. Having said that, I would strongly argue that, with all of the metaphors and symbolisms that go with this thread, Miller’s target is less men than something deeper, e.g., patriarchal, phallocentric, hypermasculine (toxic masculinity) ideologies. The specific signifiers in the above exchange — leading up to the that final question — speak to these ideologies, the big baddie, Immortan Joe, is an authoritarian (godlike, e.g., he “grabbed the sun”) ideologue who has gained his following through making himself a figure head determining Others, using them — owning them (“searing his logo”) — for his own needs, which, translated, means he objectifies men as disposable bodies to affirm his power (“Battle Fodder”) and he objectifies women for his sexual/procreative needs (“Breeding Stock”). The element that most seals the deal for me is the feminist messaging in the film. Immortan Joe keeps the women – he dehumanizingly calls them “breeders” – in a vault, equating them with “treasure,” his possessions. The women have self-awareness of this as they verbally and syntactically declare, “We are not things.” To really punctuate this horrible state of things for women, Miller gives us an image of women getting their breasts pumped for their milk, associating them with livestock. As suggested above, the objectification of bodies goes beyond just women, though; we also see how all of the bodies in this crude civilization are objectified, excepting those in power of course. And that then gets to the real complexity of this film, not “who” but what killed the Earth?

Here we get a deeper and profound complexity from the film. Intersecting with this finger pointing at men – or, rather, more precisely, patriarchy, phallocentrism, hypermasculinity – is what I would argue is finger pointing at capitalism as well, which is a patriarchal, phallocentric ideology, e.g., a mercenary, predatory, survival of the fittest ideology. We get this with many signifiers in the film, the way that the bad guys consume human bodies – e.g., the “War Boys” need the blood of Others to survive – not to mention how we see human bodies used as utility objects, e.g., again, in terms of using them as what amounts to livestock (the women getting their breasts pumped), as labor (the many ways we see bodies used as machines that make this society go), and as this allegorical capitalist (e.g., Immortan Joe) controls the wealth over those lower them him/it, in this case, the source of wealth and power being water. Oh, and that Splendid uses the term “logo” also punctuates how Immortan Joe’s possession of Others (e.g., women) is signified by this holdover from another time, corporate power and its penchant to put its “logo” on everything and/or how corporate power commodifies (objectifies) everything and everyone.

Truly a masterpiece.

(14) Never Let Me Go (2010, Mark Romanek)

Never Let Me Go may be one of the most depressing films ever made, science fiction or not. The film explores the dismal fate of “clones” created for the specific purpose of harvesting their organs when they come into their young adulthood. What makes this scenario so excruciatingly painful is that we don’t know that our characters are clones until we have become invested in them, when they are still children and so full of the same hopes and dreams as non-clone children, which makes their fate all the more painful. In this way, once we discover that these children are “clones,” it doesn’t matter, we have already come to relate to and feel something for them. To my mind, perhaps more so than any other science fiction trope, the “clone” signifier is the most potentially poignant when it comes to exploring our humanity. Never Let Me Go is one of two films (Moon is the other) on this list that to my mind powerfully and poignantly realizes this potential. In the case of Never Let Me Go, the crucial, crucial element here is what Titus Levy gets at in his essay “Human Rights Storytelling and Trauma Narrative in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go,” that this story is Kathy’s “autobiographical” account of her life, a way for Kathy (Carey Mulligan) to “give voice to the suffering of an oppressed social group” (e.g., clones) and also to reveal the clones’ humanity, their utter sameness to humans. More specifically, like humans, Kathy doesn’t “really understand what [she has] lived through” or that like humans, Kathy hasn’t “had enough time” to spend with her cherished loved one Tommy (Andrew Garfield), really, a searing indictment on this system that doesn’t see her and the other clones as equals, as human. In this way, the film’s power as allegory comes through with cogent clarity, in that these final sentiments cut through all the nonsense about Otherness in general, about how still people devalue Others and their humanity. Perhaps the most gut wrenching way this film brings us to this conclusion stems from the “clinical” setting of people getting operated on, what we are seeing seems like a life saving situation, a “carer” figure waiting in anticipation and hope of a successful “operation.” But, as we come to find out, this is really a “murder” operation, the doctors who are ethically and morally obligated to save lives actually harvesting organs from a human being! And that becomes the final deeper implication here; as we come to be invested in Kathy and Tommy’s story, we dearly want them to have more time together, dearly want Tommy to survive one more operation, and thus, it not only humanizes even more the clones (by the end I would argue that we don’t even see them as “clones”/Others anymore but as human beings) but it retrospectively informs our view of everything we have seen, registering the REAL of this monstrous system that objectifies and dehumanizes Others, ripping away any remaining illusions of the attempt to sanitize – hide, cover-up – this monstrous reality that has been manufactured. All that is left for us by the end is the REAL.

And what is that REAL? As I say, the most potent power of these AI/cloning films reside in the allegorical. In this case, this powerlessness of the clones reflects the powerlessness of many human rights abuses and atrocities going on all over the world, people born into situations where, like the clones, they literally have no recourse and no way of rebelling, people born into poverty, uneducated, who get sucked into various abuse situations, whether that be sweatshops, human (sex) trafficking, war zones, fundamentalist religious scenarios, and so on. In this way, the clone narrative is a way for us to see the glaring reality of other human rights atrocities that we let happen, e.g., we let our governments and corporations create an environment where, like the “clones” in Never Let Me Go, their very ontological being is to be disposable.

(13) Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang)

(Note: Make sure you see the fully restored version of this film; there are still horribly truncated versions out there, some of which are of such poor quality and so shortened as to make the film literally unwatchable.)

In my view, the three most important and influential science fiction films ever are Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey (for more on these two films, see below) and this early science fiction film, the incredible and masterful Metropolis. Now, I will be the first one to admit that as visionary as this film is, it does have a thoroughly problematic ending moment and does lapse into something like an unfocused messiness in the later third of the film. However, the film is also audaciously ambitious and way ahead of its times in terms of its epic scope and deep exploration of the human condition. In terms of the latter, the film is still very much relevant, especially in terms of its anti-capitalism focus, creating some of the most trenchant and exacting imagery of what capitalism is, more so than perhaps any film ever made. What this film reveals is the glaring, disturbing existential reality of the working class. That is, the opening sequences set up a binary of façade and what I will call (via the Lacanian concept) the “Real”: Through these stunning and incredibly disturbing images of the machinery and machine-like (working class) people (e.g., people turned into “machines”), Fritz Lang reveals a life of complete degradation.  Opposite this way of (degraded/dehumanized) being, we get this incredibly beautiful city of Metropolis, where the elites live a luxurious, self-indulgent life of pleasure. More pointedly, Lang gives us a devastating allegory of façade and Real that resonates with the real world then and even more so today, e.g., this lap of luxury existence of the city elites – very much signifying the lap of luxury existence of real world elites then and now – hides an abominable hidden atrocity, oppressed (working class) people whose life is nothing but angst, fatigue and misery, not unlike what we see today with our own working class and “third world” peoples around the world. Moreover, that the machines and the abuses of the working class are located “elsewhere” — or more precisely below the elites — the privileged (upper) class can keep them out of sight, out of mind, which, in turn, allows the elites to not think about the consequences of a lifestyle that is contingent upon keeping the workers in misery, again, not unlike our lifestyles today, where our consumerist lifestyles (and the hedonist lifestyles of the rich and famous) are contingent on the suffering and misery of the working class/”third worlders” in our transnational globalized world.

In this context, Freder embodies the elites of the city of Metropolis and when he sees Maria and the children enter his heavenly “paradise,” he comes to represent what should be, class consciousness crashing his perfumed reality and the ensuing guilt of what his reality is built on. One of the things that is just SO remarkable about this film is that it also presciently predicts what is going on today. That is, what we see in Metropolis is almost a literal depiction of what is happening in the world today, not in terms of a specific city but in terms of a globalized “superclass” emerging at the expense of a working class in this country and all over the world, a working class that is literally becoming as destitute and disposable as the working class in this film.

The film also crystalizes the Marxist concept of alienation. That is, here too we see a perfect illustration of this concept of alienation, the workers’ very self getting determined not by them but by external forces beyond their control. The workers are literally shaped and molded by the external forces of Joh Fredersen/capitalism, becoming estranged, or “alienated,” from their own self, never allowed self-determination or self-actualization, which, again, speaks to the plight of, well, all of us really, though the working class even more so.

And that just scraps the surface of this remarkable and deep film! Here again I’ll do a full blown analysis of Metropolis at some point in the future.

(12) The Truman Show (1998, Peter Weir)

To my mind, The Truman Show is one of the most brilliant applications of Plato’s telling “Allegory of the Cave.” Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is like those individuals chained up in Plato’s cave, though this “cave” is the incredibly sophisticated studio “set” that Truman does not know he lives in. In the case of Plato’s cave, the chains are real chains; in Truman’s case, the “chains” are the constructed “reality” that Christof (Ed Harris) has created, including inflicting on Truman a trauma to prevent him from leaving his “cave”/set. The “shadows” on the wall of the cave prisoners (who think of those shadows as what is real in their world and not what they are, representations) equate to Truman’s “false consciousness,” e.g., he sees the “fake” world around him (essentially “shadows”) in the way that Christof wants him to see it. And, like the figures in the cave, as long as Truman stays in the “cave”/set and sees “shadows”/representations — as long as he allows himself to be determined by exterior forces — Truman can only be an unreal, inauthentic human being, because he is never allowed to self-actualize himself.

The question, then, is what are the deeper implications of this, in terms of us in the “real” world? To get at this deeper level of complexity, I want to focus on the subtle forms of control that films like The Truman Show and The Matrix — another important “cave allegory” film — suggest. In effect, Christof and the A.I. intelligence of the Matrix take on deeply allegorical functions, speaking to the omniscient powers in our own lives who literally not only control us but actually “program” us so to speak. That is, like the people in the “Matrix” and Truman, we too are programmed everyday by transnational corporate power, consumerism, and media discourses to do its bidding. That is, through mass produced marketing devices, product placements, implanted advertisement, ideological media discourses that keep “normative” ways of thinking and behaving in place, implicit and overt propaganda, and so on, various powers-that-be “control” us and move us in ways we don’t even realize. Even deeper than that though is just the idea of ideology in general, which we could see as the “matrix,” various “normative” ways of thinking and being (e.g., consumerism, capitalism, patriarchy, hypermasculinity, phallocentrism, religious belief systems, etc.) that we are born into and which, if we aren’t given alternative ways of thinking and being, essentially determine us from day one and for the rest of our lives, especially in the way that various institutions (political parties, the church, the fashion industry, etc.) and media discourses reinforce every day of our lives.

In short, then, we are Truman, controlled and determined by exterior forces we cannot see and cannot comprehend. In other words, Christof/The Truman Show (the name of the TV show in the film, not the film itself) allegorically represent ideologies (Christianity, Capitalism) who “create” us (e.g., create our identity) and “control” (condition, program, incubate) us.

Here again, that just scratches this surface of this complex film, a film that I think seems simple but is to my mind extremely complex and deep, which I’ll get at more thoroughly in a latter post.

(11) V for Vendetta (2005, James McTeigue)

To my mind, V for Vendetta is like a Rosetta Stone for both a vision of what a world wide dystopian authoritarian rule looks like (as it also informs present day authoritarian tactics here in this country and around the world) and the various manifestations of the crucial force of resistance. Here again, this film is just rich in layers of meaning and symbolism, so I can only sketch out some key elements…until I do a full blown analysis of this sublime film.

V for Vendetta is informed by the Bush reign, an administration that used many of the controlling tactics we see in the film especially in terms of the propagandistic push to get us into the Iraq War. In sum, extending out to the whole film, this film really gives us the numerous tools of oppression: Power best controls the masses not through force (though that is always hovering in the background) but through other strategies, such as: stoking the negative emotions of fear and hate of Others, e.g., immigrants [Latinos], Muslims, homosexuals (LGBTQ people), activists, etc.; appealing to religious beliefs (“godlessness”); appealing to other emotional invocations (patriotism/nationalism, hypermasculinity, racism); using media propaganda strategies (e.g. cherry picking (card stacking), ad hominem attacks, many others), manipulating language and ideas (e.g., doublespeak, euphemisms, exaggeration, “spinning”), and packaging lies in highly sophisticated “truth” packages. For now, I want to focus on what the film’s core focus is, a fear and intolerance of Others.

The film consistently links all Others/oppressed people, emphasizing the need to unite against the fascist entities who not only oppress Others but, again, use them as a way to aggregate the dominant social order to support fascist power. First, the film profoundly links V (Hugo Weaving) and Dietrich (Stephen Fry), the gay TV personality who befriends Evey (Natalie Portman). For one thing, both characters share similar spaces. Moreover, both Dietrich and V wear “masks” to hide their differentness and both oppose the fascist government, V through his terrorist tactics and Dietrich through his TV show. Finally, more blatantly linking the two characters, they both fix Evey the same aesthetically pleasing breakfast. The second powerful linking of oppressed groups comes when Evey is locked up and tortured. Evey finds strength through the writing of a former oppressed victim’s last words. Before Evey there was Valerie, hauled in for being a lesbian. The film evocatively punctuates this link between Evey and Valerie by two bookend dissolves, both dissolving Valerie’s image (when she was a baby in the first one) into Evey, making the two women inextricably linked. Numerous such powerful connections exist between oppressed characters in the film (I love the linking images of V rebirthed in flames and Evey rebirthed in rain/water!), but I want to touch on just one more, the most obvious of all, the ending image of a sea of V images marching toward the parliament building. This solidarity image emphasizes the film’s didactic unity message: Again, unlike most hero narratives, where the hero “saves” the people, the character V remains an “idea” that prompts the people to take action for themselves. And that’s the message the film wants us to embrace: Like the people in the film, people in this country and elsewhere need to awaken from their slumber and take action against their corrupt governments. What happens next makes this political statement all the more powerful. The people take their masks off at the end, again emphasizing their collective individualities (and the film further emphasizes this by bringing back all of the oppressed characters in the film); as opposed to what happens under Chancellor Sutler’s fascist government, where conformity and homogeneity are the rule, true diversity –each individual according to her or his own unique self — becomes a bulwark against authoritarianism/fascism, since, as we see so clearly in this film, such oppressive ideologies need a self/Other, subject/object, master/slave dynamic to exist.

(10) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

To my mind, 2001: A Space Odyssey is simply one of the most audacious films ever made! It is also one of the most important and influential science fiction films ever made. From reading some science fiction fan sites (and teaching the film several times), I get the sense that many science fiction fans don’t like the film, largely because it doesn’t conform to their sense of what a science fiction film is supposed to look and feel like, e.g., the escapist Star Wars effect on science fiction. That is, many (most?) science fiction fans ultimately want to be “entertained” in some fashion or another, not have to work for meaning or merely appreciate art for art’s sake. And I can understand that view, since I hated the film the first time I saw it too! I still remember watching it in my early 20s and wondering what the f*** is this! Why is this film considered one of the greatest science fiction films ever? It is SOOO boring! Now, of course, I appreciate the film so much more. The film is just masterfully constructed and just so rich in many layers of meaning, not to mention that the film may be the most experiential film ever made, the viewing of it being an intimate (spiritual, profound) experience rather than just a mode of entertainment or art appreciation. Perhaps more than any film Stanley Kubrick has made (I suppose one could make an argument for Eyes Wide Shut as well), this film’s richness stems from its ambiguity, from its wealth of possible readings. I can’t possibly do the film justice in a blurb (one of these days I’ll post my personal in-depth reading of the film) but I will try to touch on some of what I see as key points of importance: To my mind, if one just reads this film in a vacuum, then, as I say, many readings are possible, but if one reads this film as part of an auteur study – what I’m doing here (again, see my post on Kubrick’s work) – then we can narrow the possible readings of this film. In short, for me, this film very much fits with Kubrick’s overall vision, a deeply cynical view of humanity, which we can get if we just isolate Kubrick’s crucial beginning moment (really, to my mind, this opening moment informs his whole oeuvre), where we get primitive “man” fighting for territory, water rights, and then, in a key evolutionary moment for humankind, “man’s” evolutionary “advancement,” creating a tool and then using that tool to kill another “man.” And then primitive “man’s” killing tool (a bone) gets thrown in the air and in one of the most famous and complex edits in film history, gets turned into a space ship, the point being that though we may advance ourselves technologically, we are still that same primitive “man” who fought over territory and killed each other. We get this idea potently punctuated — Kubrick still very much in Strangelovian (ironic, absurd) territory here — in that moment when American Heywood Floyd confronts a group of Russians and we get this primitive “man” echo, e.g., this moment is in essence the two primitive human clans squaring off against each other again, just with more fake cordiality: Apparently, we aren’t killing each other anymore (though of course this “cold” war echo registers the real deaths that this “war” effected) but humans are still territorial, duplicitous, hypocritical, power hungry, etc. We get this conflictual (primitive “man”) sensibility again when Heywood Floyd gives his little speech. I don’t think it is an accident that Kubrick strategically places an American flag in the background while Floyd talks. Here we again see humans covering up, being territorial (again, harkening back to the territorial primitive “man” and their fighting over the pool of water) and keeping secrets (they have discovered the alien monolith), and indirectly threatening the scientists, telling them that they have to sign security documents swearing them to secrecy. (And, earlier, because of this need for secrecy they denied an emergency flight permission to land, perhaps jeopardizing that crew.)

Most famously of course is perhaps the most famous AI (artificial intelligence) in science fiction, the memorable HAL. In  terms of the deeper implications of HAL, to my mind, there are a couple of possibilities: HAL “malfunctions” (and it it is stated several times that the HAL 9000 series never errors or malfunctions) because he is forced to lie and keep a secret from the crew. For some reason, this drives HAL “insane” so to speak. Perhaps it forces him to somehow reconcile two contradictory programs, one telling him to be duplicitous and the other to take “care” of his fellow crew mates. (And we get that curious moment where it almost seems as if HAL is crying out for help when he tries to talk to Dave about the mission, Dave being utterly unresponsive, a moment that provocatively registers a larger crazy sensibility that HAL seems more expressive, more emotional than the crew!) In other words, it is as if they force HAL to take on the less desirable traits of humanity, the traits of lying and keeping secrets and being deceptive. In this case, we have HAL (as I say above) “malfunctioning” because of his programmers instilling in him irrational (“human”) behavior which he can’t reconcile with his otherwise altruistic self.

Another possibility: HAL “malfunctions” because he is merely “killing” to survive. Or, finally, he “malfunctions” because, to his mind, by deciding to “kill” him, Bowman and Poole have threatened the mission, which HAL cannot allow. It is interesting to note, that in the latter two cases, HAL takes on a “survival of the fittest” sensibility, a “human trait” and one that must have also been passed on to (programmed into) HAL. Even more interesting is to think of HAL’s programming emphasizing the importance of the mission, perhaps even to the point of making the human bodies disposable, which is perhaps why he was so quick to kill them off. In any case, it would seem that it is less HAL’s fault than it is “human error.” (And we keep getting a reflection of Dave and Frank in HAL’s “all seeing” “eye,” creating a very interesting kind of mirror effect.) In this context, then, HAL is not allowed to be an evolutionary AI but instead is just another variation of the bone tool that primitive “man” used against its self centuries before, humans continuing on their self-destructive path of using tools for their own self-centered interests instead of actually using tools/technology to advance humanity in general.

The ending of the film is much talked about, a mind blowing ending that to my mind is just so suggestive of two very different readings of the film, a hopeful ending and a deeply cynical, bleak reading: For the former reading, whether it be aliens or God and whether it be via negative or positive acts, the final “star-child” moment is a positive, hopeful one, a new beginning and/or the next stage of a more healthy form of humanity. In terms of the latter reading — again, based on my overall view of Kubrick, the reading I favor — humanity and its violent, survival-of-the-fittest, dog-eat-dog sensibility makes it a dead-end species (again, despite our advanced technological state, Kubrick doesn’t think we have evolved much at all), which, in turn, makes this ending moment not necessarily a hopeful one but rather a deeply cynical one: The “star child” is not a new beginning for humanity but rather something else entirely, a new species altogether, the new species displacing dead-end humanity. (By the way, many fans and scholars believe that the ending of Arthur C. Clarke’s – who co-wrote the screenplay of this film – interesting novel Childhood’s End informs this reading.)

Finally, just a comment on the “monolith,” perhaps the most ambiguous signifier in the film: I find this reading the most compelling: Just in figurative terms, the monolith determines humanity’s fate: Arguably, this reading fits for much of Kubrick’s work: That we have little choice in the world but are determined by higher powers, in this case an “alien” presence, though that could just be an allegorical stand-in for ideologies in general (especially phallocentric, patriarchal ideologies—which would make the “monolith” a phallic symbol) which are what really determine us.

(9) Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)

To get at the monumental power of this extraordinary film, I’m going to focus on one thread of this film and then just touch on the deeper implications of the film as a whole. Here again, to truly do this film justice I’m going to have to analyze it in full, which I’ll do at some point.

To my mind, one of the threads this film projects is the idea of existentialism. That is, what the replicants represent is humanity trying to find its humanity. Roy (Rutger Hauer) was “programmed” to be a utility object for humans, e.g., he was programmed to kill, which, in turn, does indeed seem to suggest that he had no choice but to kill. However, what is so interesting to me with the ending is that Roy seems to break free from this “programmed” state of being, to existentially make a choice against his programming. He finally chooses not to kill Deckard (Harrison Ford). To my mind, that white dove is just one of the most packed pieces of symbolism in film history for it speaks to (A) Roy discovering his “humanity”; (B) Roy’s released…what? “soul”? (C) Roy’s lost innocence (destroyed at birth by a humanity/Tyrell creating a killer); (D) humanity’s lost innocence (creating utility objects/slaves could be thought of as the definitive immoral act) and perhaps humanity’s gained innocence in that the representative of humanity, Deckard (reinforced by that doubling, merging dissolve into Roy), through this life changing encounter, gains some piece of humanity, not just because of Roy’s words, which seems to visibly affect Deckard, but just by the fact that he sees a homicidal killer save/spare a life, change, reveal himself to be more human than humans.

Going back to Roy’s encounter with Tyrell, his “father” and “creator”: What’s interesting to me about this moment is how Roy does indeed seem to want to confess to his father/creator/God but what is so striking to me is how Tyrell’s response is just SO immoral!

Roy: “I’ve done questionable things.”

Tyrell: “Also extraordinary things.”

Wrong response! What this moment signifies is that Roy either has a conscience or is “evolving” a conscience (so to speak) but that Tyrell has no conscience. In other words, Roy is more human than human Tyrell, who has taken his superiority to the level of god complex and can only see all bodies as disposable, which, in turn, means that he does indeed have enormous admiration for his creation’s destructive acts. That is, Tyrell can’t see Roy as a monster but can only see Roy’s monstrous acts as “extraordinary.” In that sense, then, Roy can only be disappointed by Tyrell’s response because it isn’t a human response! Roy wants his life and in his poeticisms and in his desire to confess, it is clear to me that Roy wants his humanity. So when Tyrell responds to Roy in such an inhuman way – because Tyrell thinks of Roy only as a utility-object (e.g., “chess piece”; killer) – Roy reacts with rage. My sense is that if Tyrell had treated Roy as a human and accepted his confession, perhaps the result would have been different. Then again, we can’t forget that Roy is a psychopath (why I think Scott had Roy kill poor Sebastian), so perhaps not.

In terms of this psychopath angle, to my mind Roy is just such a great villain because he is so complex, a sympathetic psychopath! He had little choice in his path but in the end he still makes a choice. Sublime! And I just love that ending moment where Scott slows down Roy’s final movement; in effect he ironically becomes a kind of robotic statue/object, though in that last poetic image (his head tilted down in this strange kind of humility), he is also a Christ figure, a martyr for humanity’s “sins.”

As I say a deep film and one that I will come back to at some point.

(8) Ex Machina (2014, Alex Garland)

As I’ve suggested in some of the above blurbs, for me, the power of AI/clone films — at least those that treat the subject seriously and deeply and interestingly — stems from its interrogation of our history of a self/Other dynamic. In this context, I see Ex Machina as a “slave narrative.” To begin, I want to quote a key passage from Despina Kakoudaki’s chapter on seeing the enormous allegorical power of AI (and cloning) films informing this “slave” sensibility:

“Yet no amount of mechanization and modernization ever make slavery truly irrelevant to the profit structure of capitalist enterprises, and as a mode of aggressive profiteering, slavery or its close equivalents unfortunately continue to be the mode of much global labor. New forms of enslavement – from child labor to sweatshops, the international traffic in people, the rise of forced prostitution, and the forced enlistment of children soldiers in armies across the world – plague the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with vehemence. And partly because of their association with slavery, robot figures can evoke all these modern threats to the self, by referring implicitly to such labor conditions even in science-fictional contexts. Thinking about robots necessitates thinking about freedom, and thinking about freedom necessitates thinking about mechanism” (164).

What Kakoudaki is getting at here is that this master/slave (self/Other; subject/object) sensibility/divide that has been with us in one form or another since the dawn of (hu)man is still very much with us today, palpably – symptomatically/allegorically – rendered in these AI and cloning films.

In terms of Ex Machina, I don’t think there is any doubt that Nathan (Oscar Isaac) created his AIs not because he wanted to advance this area of technology (sentient being) but rather to advance his own megalomaniacal ego and to simply create slaves for his every need and desire. Of course, this is easily confirmed by the fact that all of his AIs are young, beautiful women, which he horribly abuses. In other words, I would strongly argue that this film is very much about the still deep rooted objectification of women in a patriarchal, phallocentric, hypermasculinity ideology, Nathan then becoming an allegorical figure, figurating how these ideologies objectify, commodifiy, dehumanize women. In this context, then, Ava and the other women AIs become more than AIs but become Other in general, a way for us to see more clearly how authoritarian (patriarchal, phallocentric, hypermasculine) figures in effect oppress or even “enslave” Others, especially women, which, by the way, is literal in terms of the very real and disturbing sex trafficking that is rampant in the world today. And this element isn’t just about Nathan but also figures in Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) as well, though in extremely complex ways, too complex for me to go into here. (I’ll come back to this latter thread in the film when I do a full blown analysis of the film.) One other point: That Nathan is a patriarchal, phallocentric, hypermasculine, authoritarian masculinity suggests that he has very low to zero degree empathy. This too may be a key commentary in the film, how such a persona can only create its likeness, which is why we need to work toward creating healthy masculinities in this country, not just because such a man is a very, very dangerous man to have create the first AI but because such men will in all probability (without countering influences) produce more monsters in the world. In other words, Nathan is a monster and he may have created a monster (whereas perhaps an individual with more empathy would have created a different kind of AI), which also doesn’t excuse what Ava did to Caleb (which, by the way, though not excusable, is not entirely without reason, though that gets at those complexities I mention above and so will have to wait for an explanation!) but I would argue it does keep intact the potency of the “slave narrative” part of this equation.

(7) Moon (2009, Duncan Jones)

If you’ve read the blurbs above on AI/clone films, you know by now that I love films that explore the human condition via allegorizing AIs/clones. Despite a glaring continuity error in Moon (just drives me crazy when I see it!) and an element that I find SO problematic, I think Moon perhaps realizes this allegorical potential better than any AI/clone film ever made. What Moon does so well is give us the penultimate scenario where corporate power in the future has found the perfect disposable body to use as labor for their profits, e.g., clones, or more precisely “Sam” (Sam Rockwell) whose lifespan is three years and who is then replaced by a series of “Sam” clones. That Sam has singularly been created to “work” is perhaps best summed up with a seemingly innocuous signifier, a shirt that Sam wears with the meme “Wake me when it’s quitting time” on it. This incredible signifier opens up in quite profound ways the working class signifier in the film. That is, this sentiment  is a cliché sentiment that goes back a long time, but if one digs down, we can unpack just how deep it really is, how it speaks to centuries of workers’ angst, a kind of Freudian dip into the Real of how blue collar workers (and many white collar workers) really feel about their way of being. More particularly, this sentiment speaks to the real desire of workers, who hate their jobs and live for their “free” time, the moment when their work ends, e.g., living for their weekends, vacation time, and of course eventual retirement from their work bondage. Digging even deeper, this line speaks to worker “alienation,” e.g., that workers get it, that while they have to work to feed, clothe, house themselves and their families and pay the bills and pay for necessities and of course also have a little left over for luxuries, they aren’t working to spiritually enrich themselves in any way but in fact are working for the benefit of someone else (e.g., a business owner, corporation, etc.), a loss of authenticity or actualizing self. That is, instead of living life for the actualization of self (e.g., via creative pursuits, knowledge pursuits, volunteerism, activism, spiritualism, cultural pursuits, multicultural exposures, etc.) workers spend an enormous amount of their time losing their self to an activity that sucks the life out of them and gives little back in the way of personal enrichment. (Of course I’m generalizing here…since many blue collar workers do get a sense of satisfaction for doing their work well and some even enjoy their work, etc…..)

Getting back to the film, what Moon conveys so well, as well as any film I’ve seen, is how work alienates self. In this case, what cloning gives corporate power is the ideal worker, an absolute disposable body that does not – cannot – “quit,” literally designed to be a tool for their every need, unpaid, unbenefited, situated to be compliant (by the time a Sam gets fed up with his way of being, he is engineered to die and be replaced, making “quitting” time even more dehumanizing, e.g., Sam’s quitting time is “dying” time), which, by the way, is literally not a far cry from many workers working in sweatshops around the world including in America (not to mention literally indentured and/or slave labor going on right now in the world). In this way, then, the film speaks to the dehumanizing sensibility of corporate power in general, how its sole drive is to expand, grow, garner more profit, a deeply dehumanizing sensibility that then is channeled into dehumanizing workers in every way possible, Sam/cloning representing both workers and the horizon of possibility for this dehumanizing drive/future.

There is a truly disturbing, horrifying really, added touch here: Perhaps this shirt is the original (human) Sam’s shirt but either way (either it is human Sam’s or, making this point even more egregious, the corporation supplied it) the corporation keeps it as part of its package for each new Sam, using this sentiment to exploit Sam’s desire to “quit” and go home, part of its intricate way of placating Sam, keeping him obedient, a bargain that is really an immoral lie, e.g., work for three years and you can “quit” and go home. But, then, of course, they don’t see Sam as human so they can reconcile in their minds this horrendous act–the false hope.

Finally, the thing that makes Sam’s narrative so poignant and human is that like Never Let Me Go, we don’t know for a while that Sam is a clone. That is, before we know what Sam is, we are thoroughly sutured into Sam’s humanity. That is, throughout the first half of the film we are offered the quintessential “human” representation; in his extremely human appearance (so human!) and in his human pathos (lonely, hurting, needy, as in needing human companionship) and in his attempts to survive his loneliness (talk to himself and his plants, exercise, whittles his town) and in his attempts at personalizing his otherwise impersonal space (via photos, pop culture images, drawings, names, again, the model town and plants), Sam is for us…human. In this way, the film does what the classical Hollywood style does so well, suture us into relating with his character if not even take him on as a kind of alter ego. So, then, when we learn that Sam is a clone – the ultimate Other – we in effect take on his Otherness as well and in turn (A) again, feel what an exploited Other (e.g. marginal) individual feels and (B) must reconcile our views on not just “cloning” but on the definitive view of “human” as a stable and fixed ontological category.

(6) Videodrome (1983, David Cronenberg)

To my mind, Videodrome is still David Cronenberg‘s masterpiece, though, having said that, it still isn’t a a film I recommend to people since it is extremely bizarre and extremely graphic, e.g., the film has some of the most disturbing and horrific images ever, a prime example of Cronenberg’s “body horror” phase (and at least one reason why I think the film is just such a turn-off for so many people). To my mind, Videodrome is one of the most prescient (and thus important) films of all time. For one thing, the film presciently predicted the direction our overstimulated, instant gratification, consumerist culture would go, e.g., in short, the videodrome content, an allegorical stand-in for all of the repellent content that permeates our media discourses today, sensationalistic reality shows, torture porn horror films, pornography, simulated snuff films, animal stomping videos, posted “death” videos (beheadings, etc.), and the list goes on. As the film posits, there is a vicious domino effect here, where sensationalistic stimulation begets more sensationalistic stimulation, to what end? Further, like the videodrome signal changing people’s brains (e.g., it gives people tumors, the source of their hallucinations) media discourses and technologies are also literally changing us, e.g., creating a sea of personality disorders, attention deficit disorders, anxiety disorders and so on. Even more disturbing is what Videodrome also tells us about our current milieu: Max (James Woods) becoming a living, breathing VCR controlled by the powers-that-be metaphorically signifies how we too are controlled by corporate owned media discourses and ideology in general, not just in terms of how consumerism dictates our tastes and interests but how because of our utter addiction for consumerist stimulation, we are literally directed away from the issues that impact our lives and the lives of Others (and potentially threaten transnational corporate power!). Finally, Videodrome potently and cogently telegraphs how as representational realities come to more and more permeate our lives (and become more sophisticated), “reality” and “representation” collapse, blurring the boundaries between the two, e.g., for example, think of how gaming and avatar technologies actually create preferred “realities” for people.

(5) Melancholia (2011, Lars von Trier)

As with most of Lars von Trier’s films, Melancholia is a confounding film, though unlike many of von Trier’s films, there is a kind of core clarity (at least for me!) in this film, a clarity that is deeply unsettling. For me, the key to understanding this film comes late in the film when we get this exchange:

Justine: “The Earth is evil. We don’t need to grieve for it.”

Claire: “What?”

Justine: “Nobody will miss it.”

This sentiment by Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is affirmed in the first section of the film, titled “Justine,” where we get Justine’s wedding reception. In this sequence, von Trier in effect reveals humanity’s “evil” nature (not a term I would choose but I’ll use it since it is von Trier’s term). We get this with a series of moments and encounters:

• Justine’s awful parents are utterly self-centered, more interested in their own interests or issues than their daughter’s well-being, which I’m sure at least played a part in their daughter’s severe depression. In terms of Justine’s father Dexter (John Hurt), his mean spoon gag on the “waiter” figure especially informs his self-absorbed character, part of the thread in the film (see below for more) on how the privileged class (and here Justine’s father at least plays the part of the privileged class) degrades the working (“lower”) class. The mother’s utter self-absorption is equally repellent though at least she seems to be coded as having some mental issues herself, so she has an excuse for her terrible behavior.
• Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is more interested in the smooth success of the very expensive wedding than her sister’s well-being.
• Most egregious, we get Justine’s brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland) tell Justine that he has spent a “huge amount of money” and that he thinks it is important for her to know that, though he also says that it is worth it as long as they “have a deal,” the deal being that he will happily spend this “huge amount of money” as long as she is “happy,” as if his wealth gives him the power to buy happiness, even in the face of debilitating depression, this element being a core element in the film, where money is more important than people.
• Justine’s husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) gives Justine his vision for happiness — a home with a grove of “Empire Apples” — apple trees that he grew up with, thinking that what makes him happy will make Justine happy, speaking to how he too self-absorbedly cares more about himself than Justine. His speech too was pretty shallow, him addressing how “beautiful” Justine is and how lucky he is to have such a beautiful woman instead of addressing what it is exactly about Justine that he loves, beyond her looks, a suggestion that image is the most important determinant of individuals.
• The topper to all of this is Justine’s horrible boss Jack (Stellan Skarsgård) who only cares about getting the “tagline,” meaning that his mercenary, predatory instincts are enacted even in this personal moment. This thread is particularly disgusting: Jack is wholly about not losing his money maker Justine instead of caring about her happiness; and his mercenary interests are on display as he uses this wedding reception as an opportunity to advertise to the guests, the one ad we see seeming to be a typical objectifying ad, objectifying (dehumanizing) women.

Lars von Trier has said that this film emerged after a particularly bad bout of depression, and one can see how he sees the world (at least during this dark moments of depression!), a world that if not actually creating his (Justine’s) depression has at least made it worse or isn’t conducive to making it better. If the world is what the opening sequence suggests – and it does resonate for me – then I really don’t blame Lars for suggesting via this film that maybe we are an “evil” species and that if something were to happen to us, we shouldn’t lament our passing. In this context, then, I think it is clear that the planet “Melancholia” has deep and complex metaphorical meaning, two of which I touch on here:

• The planet could signify exactly what it signifies, “melancholia,” meaning not that the planet is a source of “melancholia” but the symbol of it, e.g., that it is welcomed by Justine (and Lars von Trier) makes its approach all that much more depressing. In other words, as we see with Justine becoming more empowered (especially signified by her bathing in the planet’s rays) as Melancholia approaches, we see just how right Justine is, that we should be deeply depressed by the reality that our species is better off annihilated. (And let me be clear, I don’t think that but just the fact that this thought resonates for me speaks volumes!)
• For me, the deeper meaning is this: Though the Earth has been destroyed many times over in science fiction films, this film does it in a way that is profound, real, makes us feel a crucial truth, that we are literally just a tiny speck in the universe, vulnerable, at the mercy of an unpredictable universe that could in many different ways blink us out of existence. We think we are the center of the universe and have control of our existence but that is anything but the case, our very being just a speck of dust at the mercy of an uncaring universe. The deeper implications of this are profound: Such a humbling mode of being especially puts into context elite figures such as John, who believes that his wealth and power and privilege aggrandizes him. To my mind, the deepest meaning of this film stems from von Trier’s choice to focus on class consciousness, especially in terms of the privilege of the upper class. The film is set at John’s lavish estate, replete with a mansion, a large horse stall, and a golf course. What is so striking is how this upper-class excess plays in the wake of Melancholia approaching Earth, and the imminent annihilation of humanity. The point, I would contend, is that we can see just how small and emptied of meaning John really is when faced with his loss of control and imminent death (as his suicide testifies to). In this moment of crisis and death, we can see just how meaningless John’s wealth, power, status, and image are; in this moment, we see the real John, a small and insignificant individual, who, when stripped of his material wealth signifiers, is really an emptied-of-meaning individual, lost now that his sources of power are stripped from him. And, that, then gets at the deeper implication of this thread, how when put into the context of our real state of being (e.g., a speck of dust), signifiers of power and privilege are utterly exposed as what they are, empty and meaningless. Add in the other mercenary elements in the film (see above) and I think it is clear that von Trier is positing a commentary on the elite in the film, living an “evil” (dehumanized) lifestyle because it is an emptied-of-meaning existence that, like planet Melancholia, destroys humanity. That darker meaning is set against the film’s lasting image of Justine in the “teepee,” who chooses love and connectivity as a way to find “spiritual” meaning, von Trier’s last message of what truly elevates us.

(4) Sleep Dealer (2008, Alex Rivera)

Here again, Sleep Dealer has many rich and multi-layered layers of symbolism, all speaking to, well mostly (there is hope and a kind of utopian sensibility in at least a couple of threads in the film) the dystopian nature of many of our ideological drives, especially in terms of intersecting capitalistic interests and the self/Other divide. To get at this core issue in the film, I think the most interesting and telling imagery has to do with those images of workers using the node technology, where they almost seem like puppets on a string being controlled by some higher power, an appropriate and telling symbolic gesture that I don’t think was accidental. In this sense, the film’s power is how it gets at the dehumanizing element in “corporate controls”; as we continue to de-evolve, corporate power finds more and more ways to “control” (automate) workers and make their bodies disposable, all in the name of profit. In this sense, technology becomes a crucial tool for corporate power. Moreover, the film underscores the dangerous potential of our incessant drive to advance ourselves technologically, to the point where we get closer and closer to actual integration with technology, not to mention that technologization is largely synonymous with corporationization, where corporate power advances technologies for their own ulterior (dehumanizing) purposes.

The other crucial element in this film stems from this film being a Mexican film, giving us the unique perspective of a “third world” perspective of labor. That is, one of the crucial things this film does is allegorically reveal the disturbing reality for all “third world” workers (and first world workers working in “third world” conditions, which we can find in virtually every first world country including America), working in conditions that Sleep Dealer makes manifest, e.g., literally doing work that “drains” their lives from them – the “nodes” that are attached to the workers literally drain them of their life, hence why they can only “work” so much, less they risk their lives – a kind of slow, suffering death. What the film also potently does is reveal that transnational corporate power needs to keep this reality “hidden,” which they largely do today and which they continue to try and find ways to do more and more, making this node technology entirely believable, a way of being that corporate power would enact right now if they could. (In terms of this node technology giving the United States Mexican workers but keeping them in Mexico, the foreman tellingly says this: “This is the American Dream. We give the United States what they’ve always wanted…all the work – without the workers.”) More generally, technological advancement for transnational corporate power is all about what it will give them, not about progressing humanity towards a better future, a truly dystopian sensibility.

(3) Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuarón)

As many science fiction scholars suggest, the power of dystopia is in how it reveals the very real dystopian elements presently in our present reality, by showing us the potential (and some would say probable) endpoints of such elements. In this way, dystopias “estrange” us from our present reality and force us to see it in all its dysfunctionalism and then, hopefully, spur us to change course. To better flesh this idea out, let me zero in on what is to my mind one of the most powerful moments in all of cinema: To my mind, the birth of Dylan in the extraordinary film Children of Men is a utopian moment. That is, context is just enormous, in that it takes what we consider a norm and not really anything exceptionally meaningful (birth of baby; baby crying) and turns it into something else entirely. Here, the birth of the only child on the planet speaks to what we think of as a cliché, the “miracle” of birth/life. More profoundly, though, Dylan takes on a kind of hyper-symbolism: Humanity is literally dying (dare I say, arguably, a larger metaphor for…us?) and thus the “birth” of Dylan signifies not just a “birth” of hope but a re-birth of a (theoretically anyway) different kind of humanity. That is one of the key utopian strains in this film. Born of an “immigrant” woman of African descent (echoing the anthropological “Eve”), the film’s stress on the “fertility”/infertility binary emphasizes a completely different direction than the Christian narrative: In other words, Dylan signifies “Otherness” (African [person of color], “immigrant,” lower class, female) as the seed of life, an elixir to the inexorably contentious hierarchal, patriarchal, phallocentric, Eurocentric/western/white (self/Other) Christian narrative model, at least as it developed. And then the baby’s cries of protest also become highly symbolic. That is, the baby’s cries momentarily stop the conflictual (self/Other) violence, in effect displacing the sounds of violence with the sound of the cries of the newborn. In other words, the baby’s cries and reverence shown to the baby is the momentary (but speaking to the future potential) utopian shift from violence and conflict and ideological division between peoples to all that this baby represents, a rebirth/Christ metaphor (though, again, an alternative/Other Christ narrative!) that is allegorically informed by seeing this Other/baby as them, as their instant hope for a future humanity, their awe that their is even this possibility, their stillness speaking to a momentary-but-glimpse-at-the-future return of one people, one humanity, the possibility of a return to innocence and connectivity and collectivity.

And that gets to the other radical element in this extraordinary film, e.g., its focus on the always controversial topic of “immigration,” though in this dystopian context, this issue takes on a much, much different look. That is, I think the film is trying to transcend these present day issues and take a broader scope on immigration. First of all, the simple but profound point is this: No matter how we feel about immigration, when humanity degrades humanity like we see in this film, humanity has lost its humanity. Second, though, and informing this first point is this more complex take on immigration that Cuarón is positing: What is so striking in the film is how Cuarón puts white (Eurocentric/western) people in the immigration “cages” while also coding people who are usually coded as “foreign” (or Other) – e.g., that woman of middle eastern descent (wearing head coverings), another middle eastern looking man in the gated community, etc. – as British. Doing this makes a deeply profound point: When the world is collapsing everyone is potentially an “immigrant” (are there any Americans in those cages???) e.g., since it sounds as if many countries have collapsed, both “first world” and “third world” alike. In this way, the film profoundly reveals how these labels we create (e.g., “immigrants,” “British,” “Americans,” etc.) are not “natural and normal” but rather arbitrary ideological constructs. As the film goes on and it humanizes “immigrant” characters (or as they are called in the film “fugees”) – while showing how many of the British are cruel and inhumane – we can further see just how arbitrary these labels of self (British) and Other (immigrants/refugees) are, e.g., the dehumanizing (intolerant, racist, hierarchal, disconnecting, xenophobic, putting profit before people and the environment, and so on) element of the dominant social order (e.g., British) is implied to be the same dehumanizing element that created this dystopia in the first place. What really punctuates this idea is that the symbolism of the ship “Tomorrow” — the actual hope of humanity — further breaks these signifiers down, e.g., by being a “no place,” it radically breaks down the idea of nation-states (or nation-state borders/boundaries) — and thus utterly deconstructs the divisive signifiers of nation-state signifiers (e.g., “British,” “American,” etc.) and Othering signifiers (e.g., “immigrants,” “fugees,” “refugees,” etc.) creating the utopian signifier of just human, e.g., we are all humans and all in this together.

Another film that is just rich in deeper layers of meaning and which I’ll come back to at some point.

(2) Snowpiercer (2014, Joon-ho Bong)

To my mind, the dystopia film Snowpiercer (2013, Joon Ho Bong) is just such a invaluable film due to its incredible capacity to cuttingly capture — or “cognitively map” – how our current and future dystopian milieu is informed by our (globalized) capitalism system. As E. Ann Kaplan conveys in her “pretrauma imaginaries” work, “Anxiety about the future incited by such [dystopian] fantasies may produce traumatic emotions similar to those of PTSD and a disabling uncertainty about one’s own future. But engaging in such fantasies may, on the contrary, offer what I call ‘memory for the future,’ less a disabling anxiety than a productive warning to bring about needed change” (18). Like Kaplan, for me, dystopias are incredibly valuable if they reveal the very real dystopian elements presently in our present reality, by showing us the potential (and probable in many cases) endpoints of such elements. In this way, dystopias “estrange” us from our present reality and force us to see it in all its dysfunctionality, self-destructiveness, and, then, hopefully, spur us to change course. No film dials up this sensibility as well as Snowpiercer.

For more of my thoughts on this special film, see my blog post.

(1) Dr. Strangelove (1964, Stanley Kubrick)

Dr. Strangelove is more an example of “speculative fiction” than science fiction, though, then again, “speculative fiction” is just another wing of science fiction. In any case, Dr. Strangelove exemplifies the power of science fiction, giving us a very real possible future scenario that then informs us of what is wrong with us, that which might actually enact such a very real possibility, e.g., nuclear annihilation.

For me, Stanley Kubrick’s key focus in most of his films is on masculinity constructions; or, more particularly, phallocentric, patriarchal, hypermasculinity ideological constructions. He at least makes this a part of his focus in almost all of his films though he most especially focuses on this element in Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket, which is in part why they are my two favorite Kubrick films. That is, Kubrick not only deconstructs the mythos around these ideologies (for centuries, but especially in American history – especially in the last hundred years or so – phallocentrism, patriarchy, hypermasculinity have been romanticized, valorized) but he reveals them to be destructive ideologies both in general terms (which is why I would argue that Kubrick is a feminist!) and to men themselves. In Dr. Strangelove, via his many outlandish (and hilarious) phallic symbols – especially as he gives us “the most potent phallic symbol in film history, the atom bomb itself, amusingly placed between the legs of Major T. J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) – and his hilarious names (Jack D. Ripper, Buck Turgidson, etc.) and through many other symbolic signifiers (the Doomsday Machine), Kubrick not only rips the veil off of the normalizing and valorizing nature of phallocentric, patriarchal, hypermasculine ideologies – again, revealing them to be both absurd and seriously (self) destructive. As with Kubrick’s most complex films, I can’t possibly get at the many layers of complexity with this film. To perhaps touch on this complexity, let me finish here with an excerpt from my essay “The Cognitive Mapping Phallocentrism, Patriarchy, and Hypermasculinity in Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket, and Fight Club,” an excerpt that I think kind of sums up the power of yet another audacious (and hilarious!) Kubrick film:

“That the atomic bomb is between Kong’s legs explicitly ‘endows’ him with not just any phallic symbol but the mother of all phallic symbols. The key here then is this packaging of phallic symbols (cowboy hat and Hollywood Western genre heritage, e.g., Kong played by cowboy actor Slim Pickens and his character talks ‘cowboy’ rhetoric, not to mention that he rides the atom bomb down rodeo style, hootin’ and hollerin’ all the way down) and the ultimate destructive phallic symbol (atom bomb), an intersection that makes this moment more than just another phallic symbol (even if it is perhaps the most potent phallic symbol in film history!): Digging a little deeper, one could perhaps read this moment more provocatively: It isn’t an atom bomb that destroys the world; rather, it is a ‘cowboy’ (e.g., in this case Kong) who destroys the world. Since the ‘cowboy’ (frontier) sensibility of American patriarchal, phallocentric, hypermasculine masculinity has a specific ideology – that violence is a natural and normal solution to conflict; that authoritarian, hierarchal, patriarchal (non-critical) thinking is the encouraged norm; that one thinks reactively rather than contemplatively; that emotional and empathetic reactions should be suppressed; that masculinity is based on a single-minded dedication to bravery, heroism, sacrifice, purpose (rather than contemplating consequences), and extraordinary abilities; that the world is set in black and white (good and evil) terms – all of which informs Kong’s decision to blindly carry out his self-destructive mission, we can take this meaning even further: This ideology of a ‘cowboy’ sensibility goes hand-in-hand with – is informed by and informs – even more omnipotent ideologies in the film, the ideologies of patriarchy, phallocentricism, hypermasculinity. And, thus: It isn’t just a ‘cowboy’ who destroys the world, it is, in short, patriarchal, phallocentric, hypermasculine ideologies.”