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Kakoudaki, D, (2002) “Spectacles of History: Race Relations, Melodrama, and the Science Fiction/Disaster Film”, Camera Obscura, vol. 17 no. 2, pp. 108-153. Accessed at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/co/summary/v017/17.2kakoudaki.html on 6 Sept 2010.
Kakoudaki begins with a strong claim about the connection between science fiction and the real world – we often understand what is happening in real life by reference to popular science fiction. Kakoudaki mentions that in the news reports following the September 11 attacks, someone mentioned that the footage was “just like Independence Day.” This serves to strengthen the importance of what is presented in science fiction. This paper looks in particular at what we may call disaster science fiction films, e.g. Independence Day, Deep Impact, and Volcano. These stories are important ways of thinking about race and gender, because there is no sentient outside force to fight against – no Other – and thus there is more scope for narratives about e.g. female and black characters that are counted as Us (or as U.S. – these films are always about America, Kakoudaki points out).
Kirby, D A, (2004) “Extrapolating Race in GATTACA: Genetic Passing, Identity, and the Science of Race”, Literature and Medicine, vol. 23 no. 1, pp. 184-200. Accessed at http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=676260071&Fmt=7&clientId=20923&RQT=309&VName=PQD on 6 Sept 2010.
As in the Kakoudaki paper, Kirby observes how science fiction films give us ways of understanding what is happening in our own time. In this case, the film GATTACA isused as a paradigm example of “extrapolative” science fiction, which takes our current ways of using technology and attempts to trace its trajectory to it logical conclusion. GATTACA, Kirby claims, shows some of the consequences of geneticization (seeing humans reductively, as composed of their genes), and thus offers a critique of this process. However, the film fails to recognize other problems present in our current practices, namely, the attempt by some social conservatives to define race by genes. This is a problem for the film. If GATTACA is our way of understanding why eugenics is to be avoided, it may also blind us to the dangers to marginalized races of some ways of defining race. More generally, Kirby’s claim is that if science fiction imagines our future, it must do so carefully lest it cause serious harm. The idea I find most important here, and most worthy of consideration, is that science fiction, being extrapolative, must may inadvertently misrepresent the present, having problematic consequence for both present and future if it does not.
Lavender, III, I, (2004) “Technicity: AI and Cyborg Ethnicity in The Matrix”, Extrapolation, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 437-458. Accessed at http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=811521941&Fmt=7&clientId=20923&RQT=309&VName=PQD on 6 Sept 2010.
Noting that various films conflate technology with ethnicity, Lavender attempts to understand the post-human future of race, conceptualized through the framework of technicity, i.e. technologically based ethnicity. Lavender does this by looking at The Matrix. Contrary to the cyborgs given to us by Haraway, and the utopia envisioned in the MCI advertisement; in this film at least, race has not been abolished. Instead, new ethnicities – technicities – arise, and a struggle for dominance remains. This is seen in The Matrix where places such as the virtual dojo where Neo trains are programmed from outside, yet still follow stereotypes. Furthermore, whereas according to Haraways idea of the cyborg is meant to destroy the line between human and machine, in the film we find ourselves discriminating between natural-born human, unplugged human, and the evil AI. Lavender’s point is that if The Matrix is one way of imagining the future, then we will still find ourselves using new ways of discriminating against race, this time in the form of technicity. Thus this concept challenges any view of the cyborg that sees it as being an easy way of navigating through current troubles with race and gender.
Silvio, C, (1999) “Refiguring the radical cyborg in Mamoru Oshii's “Ghost in the Shell””, Science-fiction studies, vol. 26 no. 1, pp. 54-72. Accesed at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240752 on 9 Sept 2010.
Silvio’s starting point in this paper is, yet again, Haraway’s cyborg. In Haraway’s original essay, the cyborg was at once a model for liberation, but simultaneously a potential location of new networks of domination. It is this second part which has been mostly forgotten in both theory and popular culture (again see the MCI commercial), and which Silvio wants to remind the reader of. The Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell is used as an example of a text which claims to adopt the liberatory aspects of the cyborg, but nevertheless reinforces current structures of dominance. Silvio discusses how the film undermines binary sexual difference as part of its plot, but ultimately reinforces them in order to resolve the narrative. This article is useful for understanding how cyborgs might work. It also serves as an example for the worry that science fiction, especially popular science fiction, in its need for narrative resolution, may adopt one part of the cyborg figure, but destroy the ambiguity that makes it powerful in Haraway’s work.
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