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ОглавлениеCamus’ absurd and science fiction film: A potential point of convergence?
In this book, I will examine the relevance of Albert Camus’ philosophy of the absurd to science fiction films – in particular, the subgenre involving encounters with nonhuman beings.1 To establish such a connection, I will invoke aspects of the Camusean analysis of the absurd to explain and understand four films from this subgenre. I will then test whether the context offered by this type of film enables a new understanding of Camus’ “feeling of the absurd” (Nagel 1971; Pölzler 2018) and the various tensions he considers inherent to human existence.
Yet, quite justifiably, various questions arise: Why science fiction films? And why Camus? What reason is there to connect the two? What leads me to believe that Camusean analysis of the absurd in the human condition could provide a fertile ground for a fresh perspective on science fiction film?
The philosophy of science fiction film
Over the last two decades, many philosophers have been increasingly inclined to consider film – and, more specifically, science fiction film – as a source of philosophical inquiry (Sanders 2008: 1; Litch 2010: 2). The ←1 | 2→more that is written on the subject, the clearer it is that opinions on the exact philosophical nature of film differ starkly. Scholars seem to share the view that films do not construct proper or explicit philosophical arguments in the way they approach fundamental questions (Anderson 2018; Baggini 2018). Some, however, consider film “an external embodiment” of philosophical thought (Rowlands 2005: 3), and, as such, an “effective tool for introducing a philosophical topic” (Litch 2010: 4). Others believe that films are more than mere tools for illustrating philosophical arguments and suggest that they may provoke philosophical thinking and both echo and develop philosophical ideas (Sanders 2008: 1). Finally, a more provocative approach, most prominently expressed by Stephen Mulhall (2016: 3–10), rejects both previous approaches on the basis that their use of film only serves to reconfirm theories to which they are already committed. Maintaining that films are, in fact, active participants in the making of philosophy, Mulhall argues for their capacity to expand philosophy beyond the reach of formal arguments.2
There is, however, agreement among many scholars that films can be “philosophical exercises” (Mulhall 2016: 4), an extended form of the philosophical thought-experiment. The traditional thought-experiment is conceived by the philosopher’s imagination within the “laboratory of the mind”; it tests a hypothetical situation, which often transcends current technology or laws of nature, to “illustrate a puzzle, lay bare a contradiction in thought, and move us to provide further clarification” (Schneider 2016: 1). Similarly, films introduce us to a fictional world, often with “sufficient context” to interpret their key elements as a thought-experiment (Litch 2010: 5).
In his 1938 review of Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel Nausea, Camus offers an explanation that could be indirectly applied to the discussion of film as philosophy: A “novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images” and, therefore, a good novel is one whose entire philosophy has been successfully translated into images (Camus, quoted in Golomb 2005: 120). Great novelists are philosophers who have preferred “writing in images” ←2 | 3→over “reasoned arguments,” since they have had more confidence in the “educative message of perceptible appearance” (ibid.). They have insisted on relying solely on what experience allows them to say (Hughes 2007: 62).3
When we consider films as philosophical thought-experiments translated into perceptible appearances, science fiction seems to be a genre whose philosophical exercises are often centered on the nature of human consciousness and existence (Sanders 2008: 1). Knight and McKnight suggest that “it is a feature of this genre to pose such questions as, What is it to be human?” (Sanders 2008: 26–27). A continuation of the “early myths and epic sagas of many narrative traditions,” science fiction employs the dimensions of space and time in order to gain perspective on our place in the universe; the cosmos is therefore a backdrop against which the interior space and present angst of the human are explored (Sardar 2002: 1).
While science fiction films seem to both pose fundamental questions and attempt to answer them in their own way through the perceptible realization of thought-experiments, in order to become a fully realized philosophy, they require philosophers. They “demand to be understood metaphysically” (Mulhall 2016: 7). They may evoke new philosophical thought-patterns, which should then be passed into philosophy to become illuminated for the viewer. After all, even Camus, who preferred concrete ←3 | 4→experience over thought, felt compelled to supplement his literary works by writing essays, as essays constitute the more abstract and argumentative form. Art, he stated, has the power to awaken many people to authentic life, but this awakening can only be completed through the elucidation of the implications of the art’s philosophy (Golomb 2005: 120–121). Thus, to evaluate the contribution of this genre to philosophical discussion on human consciousness and existence, we must add “philosophy’s voice” (Mulhall 2016: 10); that is, we must engage in a philosophical dialogue with the films.
One of the most intriguing ways in which this genre’s thought-experiments explore the nature of human experience is through imagining encounters with nonhumans. Where does the urge to envisage self-aware artificial intelligences and beastly or godlike aliens come from? Schelde (1993: 3–4) argues that sci-fi nonhumans are merely a new manifestation of the monsters, ogres, trolls and elves of olden times. Such anthropomorphic folkloric creatures could thrive only so long as nature remained uncapturable and elusive; as soon as science tamed the wild by offering explanations of the natural world, forests once teeming with dwarfs and fairies became just forests. Since outer space, with its billions of galaxies, now represents the new unknown it has begun to accommodate space monsters and sprites
While this may account for the cultural and psychological dynamics that brought sci-fi nonhumans into being, their philosophical value remains undetermined. Rowlands (2005: 1–2) claims that this is the very “intellectual underpinning of sci-fi”: The stark otherness serves as a mirror through which we see our own reflection; as we stare at the monster, we realize that it is ourselves who are staring back at us. In discussing the role of sci-fi aliens, Sardar (2002: 6) suggests that they are the “dark antithesis” that make the patches of light within the narrative’s structure appear brighter, thereby throwing into sharp relief the nature of humanness. The aliens demonstrate that which is not human in order to illustrate that which is human; indeed, by reinforcing our sense of self, they complete the “chain of science fiction as normative genre” (ibid., 6). When Knight and McKnight analyze Blade Runner (Sanders 2008: 21–37), they deal not with what it is to be replicants, but with what it is to be human.
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Philosophically, there can be no definition for something or someone that has no “other.” A definition is possible only through comparison. Given that, in our present human condition, we do not have any self-reflective other who could hold up a mirror to us, this subgenre could represent one possible way for humans to transcend their anthropocentric worldview and outline the boundaries of human existence and consciousness. As the “conception of ‘us’ would lose meaning” in the absence of aliens, we need aliens to define a “conceptual, epistemological and innate” boundary (Sardar 2002: 9–10).4 Moreover, their threatening non-humanity, and sometimes inhumanity, often lead us to re-evaluate human values and human instincts (ibid., 4).
This capacity to test the limits and limitations of human existence is, perhaps, the original contribution of science fiction film – and, more specifically, the subgenre involving nonhuman encounters – to philosophical thinking. By placing humans within larger cosmic contexts and in contact with unfamiliar elements, they delineate and clarify the frontiers of human nature. Whether it is an individual’s journey in space, a malignant or benign alien invasion, or humanity’s end of days, human beings are set against archetypical antitheses in order to call into question the preconceived metaphysical notions of viewers and to trouble the limits of their experience as “finite and embodied beings” (Anderson, 2018).
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Camus’ philosophy of the absurd
The very phrase “Camus’ philosophy” seems to pose a problem: Can Camus’ absurdism be considered a real philosophy? This question has stirred up a great deal of controversy among philosophers – both in relation to Camus’ stature as a philosopher, which he himself questioned,5 and the philosophical wholeness of his notion of the absurd.
While highly esteemed for his literary genius, Camus’ importance as a philosopher has been disparaged even by the “few scholars still interested” in him (Golomb 2005: 119). Golomb suggests that Camus is at least partially responsible for this, as he refuted his association with existentialism and was content to employ only “the explicatory-descriptive side of phenomenology,” in contrast to Heidegger’s and Sartre’s efforts to ground their intuitions in valid systems (ibid., 119, 141). Foley (2008: 5) adds that nowadays the term “absurd” appears only rarely in academic discourse, including discussions dedicated to existentialist philosophy.
One of the most widespread criticisms of Camus’ philosophical works is that they unequivocally fail the test of formal arguments. His ideas appear in the “fragmented fashion typical of artistic works” (Sagi 2002: 1). The unsystematic, perhaps even anti-systematic, nature of his philosophy has led most scholars to overlook its depth and complexity (Aronson 2017: 2). Some, on the other hand, compare Camus’ philosophical endeavor with the work of Plato, Montaigne, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, all of whom have made major contributions to philosophy, despite not being philosophers in the modern academic sense (Sagi 2002: 2; Golomb 2005: 119; Zaretsky 2013: 50–51). As I shall argue in Part I, the fact that Camus does not follow conventional pathways does not necessarily prevent him from constructing a relatively coherent universe, with its own metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, methodology, and ethics.
There is, however, a much deeper reason why Camus has remained an outsider to philosophy. As Zaretsky (2013: 13) points out, in The Myth ←6 | 7→of Sisyphus Camus determinedly left behind philosophy’s traditional terminology and methodology. One could even think of this central essay on the absurd as a protest against philosophy’s failure to respond to the “one truly serious philosophical problem” (MS, 1). The essay is “a philosophy that contests philosophy itself” (Aronson 2017: 2), one that rejects the very idea of a philosophical system and, when confronted with the immediate and pressing question of whether life is worth living at all, it occasionally abandons the solid ground of argument and analysis altogether in favor of metaphors and impressions. This led Francis Jeanson to claim that absurdist philosophy is a contradiction in terms, not a philosophy but “an anti-rational posture that ends in silence” (ibid., 2); yet, such an exaggerated contention fails, in my opinion, to capture the complexity and coherent logic of Camus’ ideas. After all, Camus never opposed rationality and reason, but rather clarified their limited efficaciousness for comprehending “the ever-resurgent irrational” (MS, 34).
In some respects, Camus’ absurd has a philosophical status similar to that of “film as philosophy.” Both clearly carry philosophical content, but their tendency to elude the explicit argument, prioritize experience and convert thinking into impression and metaphor – thus creating Mulhall’s “philosophy in action” (2016: 4) – leads systematic idea-makers to regard them with suspicion. They thrive on the “open border” between philosophy and art (Baggini 2018).6 This shared destiny may prove to be the cause of important mutual influence.
Hughes (2007: 55) suggests that the “one truly philosophical problem,” as presented by Camus, is located either “at the limits or even outside philosophy itself.” Absurd reasoning requires the very act of philosophizing to stretch beyond an unduly narrow conception of philosophy when confronted with this fundamental life-or-death question. If anything, the role of philosophical thought is, in this case, to systematically negate itself by acknowledging its limits. In his rejection of not only every existing answer to the question, “What is the meaning of existence?” but also our very capacity to answer, Camus shifts his concern to an experience that is of ←7 | 8→“extremely limited philosophical import” (ibid., 56). Since this matter is simultaneously too humble and too emotional, it needs to be captured at the experiential level before it can be reached by philosophy (Aronson 2017: 6). Above all else, the absurd is a feeling, which arises arbitrarily, and it is therefore beyond argument and justification.7 Put simply, it cannot be “philosophically justified” (Golomb 2005: 123).8
The concept of the absurd – the lucid recognition of human reality as a juxtaposition of “a yearning for the absolute” and an “awareness of the limitations and finality of human ability” (Sagi 1994: 283) – begins as a feeling and as an experience. It is therefore plausible to assume that, since the feeling of the absurd conveys more than any explanation of the absurd could, “it is up to other forms of discourse,” the various arts in particular, to make up for the limitations of theoretical philosophy (Hughes 2007: 57). In Camus’ words, “If the world were clear, art would not exist” (MS, 95).
The absurd unveils a truth about the human condition that eludes formal arguments (Zaretsky 2013: 45). It is perhaps for this reason that The Stranger preceded The Myth; only after we have come into contact with the feeling that permeates Meursault’s life, as much as it permeates our own, can we advance to the essay – and even this evades justification and centers on a description and “diagnosis” of the human predicament (Golomb 2005: 120). The right order is from art to the “phenomenology of the ‘notion of the absurd’ ” (ibid., 120–121). The absurd is a crisis of meaning, lurking at every corner, waiting to strike at any moment, evoking the painful “Why?” in the face of a silent and indifferent universe. Yet, Camus appears uninterested in destabilizing this inherent tension by answering the question; the unsettling feeling and its manifestations – weariness, anxiety, strangeness, nausea, and horror in the face of one’s mortality – should be pursued all the way to their origin (Pölzler 2018: 2). Camus strives to maintain the ←8 | 9→sense of a “consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence” (Zaretsky 2013: 13).
Even some of Camus’ critics, among them analytic philosophers, have acknowledged the unfailing presence of the absurd in human life. Ayer recognizes an undeniable “emotional significance” in The Myth (ibid., 47). Nagel (1971: 718) believes that although the arguments for absurdity are logically feeble, they seem to “express something that is difficult to state, but fundamentally correct.” He regards this absurd predicament as a feature of our very humanness (ibid., 726). The absurd, as a pre-philosophical, concrete reality, may be more conceivable. It is “an experience to be lived through” (TR, 8).
All of this raises the possibility that, in the same way that Camus felt compelled to move back and forth, from literary and theatrical expression to essays and vice versa, a different, less philosophically rigid medium is required to help us to bring the experience of the absurd and Camus’ vision of the human–cosmos relationship more sharply into view – a medium that is ideally located on the border that loosely separates philosophy from art.
The choice to employ science fiction film for this task has at least three advantages: First, film strives to create symbolic and imaginative representations of the world that remain believable and consonant with our actual human experience to enable us to reveal something we have not noticed before or to “make sense of it in a different and helpful way” (Baggini, 2018).9 Second, the perceptible thought-experiments of science fiction film are largely centered on asking, and attempting to answer, life’s most urgent questions regarding the nature and meaning of the human phenomenon. A third advantage, however, may best explain the suitability of science fiction film; I shall elaborate on this third advantage in the following section.
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The thematic and methodological interconnection of absurdism and science fiction film
Camus’ philosophy of the absurd is almost completely absent from discussions of the philosophy of film, and the philosophy of science fiction film in particular.10 This is intriguing, since there is a strong thematic and methodological link between the two: They are both engaged in testing and exploring the limits of human experience through humankind’s relationship with the cosmos, either in the form of another species or with the universe as the ultimate other. Furthermore, both are doing this – Camus consciously and the films through a suggestive philosophical interpretation – in the hope of extricating not only the nature of humanness, but also the human potential to attain lucidity, authenticity, freedom and even happiness.
If Schelde’s (1993: 3–4) assertion that science fiction film weaves our modern mythology is right, Camus’ own myth – that of Sisyphus as the archetypal human – fits into this mythology well. At the core of the Sisyphean experience, there is an unresolvable tension between human consciousness and the cosmos. Camus painstakingly describes this inherent tension as the friction between longing and limit: the longing for meaning and the inability to find it; the longing for reason and lucidity and the limit of knowing; the longing for unity and the limit of separation; the longing for rebellion and the limit of a predetermined fate; the longing for tomorrow and the limit of death, and the longing for the heights and the limits of circularity and repetitiveness. The foundation of all of these frictions is a consciousness struggling with the recognition of its barriers and finitude: “lucid reason noting its limits” (MS, 47).
This is perfectly congruent with science fiction’s – and especially the nonhuman subgenre’s – philosophical inclination toward marking or questioning the boundaries of human existence. Just as science fiction makes ←10 | 11→use, as a part of its methodology, of either posthuman beings or aliens to gain perspective on the nature of human existence within the empty cosmic vastness, so the absurd negatively emphasizes and reinforces the walls that surround man, only to draw strength from these walls (MS, 58). The enclosing walls are the source of the absurdist enlightenment.
A long list of science fiction films weave their philosophical tension around the human longing to know and to unite and the limit of the cosmic silence.11 It seems that such films send humans off on dumbfounding journeys through outer space to test the friction between alienation and unity. Humans are often left hovering in an infinitely vacant universe, forced to come to terms with their insatiable longing. The astonishing beauty of the cosmic landscape is at once “inhuman” and “remote.”12 Ironically, the broadened context aggravates the sense of limitation, the fundamental experience Buber (2004: 157) described as being “homeless in infinity.” The scale of the unfolding cosmos intensifies human smallness and, with it, the absurdist pathos.
It is important to recognize that science fiction film is the folklore of an era and also, for the most part, a mythology narrated by one specific civilization. It usurps whatever point in space it reaches and lands on in order to establish “Western epistemology and metaphysics” (Sardar 2002: 12).13 Its imagined futures carry with them the complexes of the modern mind, including the psychological complexes evoked by its science and technology. Sagi (2002: 12) asserts that the experience of the absurd, as captured by Camus, is a “symptom of modern life” rather than an inherent attribute of human existence – indeed, it is the outcome of the Copernican revolution, which robbed humans of the feeling that the universe could be their home. Hemmed in by the unlimited on every side, humans were forced ←11 | 12→into the discovery that they were different from the rest of creation. Thus, the absurd came into being – or, at least, intensified – with the emergence of the highly subjective, individual self-consciousness (ibid., 8). Later scientific breakthroughs, which on the surface seemed to get us closer to the mystery of the universe – such as the growing cosmological awareness of its immeasurable magnitude – have only further illustrated the randomness of the appearance of an isolated and bewildered self-reflective awareness on one floating planet in the midst of expanses without horizons.
It is for this reason that visions of the future in science fiction film are accompanied by a sense of disconcerting estrangement. The highly advanced yet cold-hearted technology, gloomy spaceships gliding into the coolness of cosmic space, unfathomable black holes, and the strange appearances of the “others” all serve as effective magnifiers of the experience of the absurd. Wherever humans travel, be it “down here” or “out there,” the absurd awaits them patiently, ready to toss them back onto themselves. As I will suggest later, it may be more accurate to state that we take our alienation with us: an embodied self-awareness that hits against the walls of its longing in whatever corner of the universe it finds itself in.14
It is therefore reasonable to seek new layers of insight into the experience of the absurd by utilizing a filmic genre that has constructed the ideal setting for it: The tangible limits that are created by placing humans in relation to extra-human elements force men and women to turn their gaze to the mirror of the absurd and to consciously choose concrete ways of facing this inescapable fate. The reality of the absurd, which in daily life may only be fleetingly experienced, pressing in on one gently, becomes acute and undeniable in light of such sharp contrasts. But before we delve into examples of the subgenre of nonhumans, we must first gain a deeper understanding of the concept and the experience of limits and the many different expressions of limits in Camus’ philosophy.
The book’s first part – “Camus’ absurd: Consciousness and limits” – aims to introduce the main components of Camus’ absurdity in such a ←12 | 13→way that it can be easily applied to the analysis of the films later. Since Camus himself ascribed to the novel, and to art in general, greater capacities to capture the “feeling of the absurd,” I ground my elucidation of absurdity in my analysis of The Stranger and Caligula, thus establishing the arts, and consequently film, as a more immediate way of approaching the absurdity of the human condition. In Chapter 1, I demonstrate the way The Stranger silently and metaphorically thrusts us into the territory of the absurd, revealing that the principle that limits not only define human nature, but also hold a surprising redemptive power is at the heart of the absurd. Chapter 2 explores the concept of the absurd, more coherently presented in The Myth of Sisyphus, as a collision between human consciousness and five untraversable limits – separation, knowing, meaning, death, and repetition. I argue that the source of absurdity is the very existence of a self-transcendent, observing consciousness, and that since it is consciousness itself that produces absurdity, it will take absurdity with it to any imaginable universe or future. In Chapter 3, drawing on The Myth and The Rebel, I turn to the consequences of awakening to the feeling of absurdity and the ways in which one could or should live in the light of this feeling. I consider the variety of possible responses proposed by Camus to this recognition of the absurdity of the human condition: from the five negative responses of suicide, murder, nihilism, hope, and renunciation, to the five positive responses of acceptance, revolt, freedom, passion, and human solidarity.
Equipped with these Camusean essentials, I delve, in the second part – “Science fiction films: Absurd at the edge of the cosmos” – into an in-depth analysis of four science fiction films (the rationale for the selection of these four films will be addressed in the concluding chapter). Chapter 4 analyzes, side by side, two first-contact films – Robert Zemeckis’ Contact (1997) and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) – to test the validity of Camus’ metaphysics in a universe where human estrangement seems to be disrupted by cosmic visitors. Similarly, Chapter 5 analyzes, side by side, Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) and Spike Jonze’s Her (2013). Whereas the sudden descent of Contact’s and Arrival’s aliens is experienced as the appearance of the ultimate other who mirrors our relationship with a silent universe, it is the disturbing closeness of these A.I. forms to the ←13 | 14→human experience that starkly reflects the absurd tensions of the human experience and potential responses to these. Lastly, in Chapter 6, I bring together the conclusions of all four films to derive from them more general insights in the light of Camus’ absurdity. I confirm the argument put forward in Part I that absurdity is, first and foremost, a collision within ourselves, and therefore, a friction that should also be expected to afflict us at the edge of the universe, in a far-off future. Furthermore, I show that these analyses yield more than an insightful reflection of the absurd in science fiction film. Indeed, imaginative collisions with nonhumans seem to tell us a lot about the nature of the absurd in the human condition, as well as raising the question of whether absurdity is exclusively a human matter. Ultimately, my interpretation of the films illuminates the films themselves just as much as it illuminates, challenges, and expands Camus’ concept of absurdity, thus contributing to our current understanding of what the absurd reality is and how we can either live with it or transcend it.
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1 This is not an accepted classification in film studies. Based on the Science Fiction Handbook (Booker and Thomas 2009), it could be thought of as a synthesis of two subgenres: the alien invasion narrative and cyberpunk and posthuman science fiction. For the purposes of my analysis, this subgenre includes science fiction films involving an encounter with an apparently competitive, self-conscious “other”: clones, artificial intelligence, androids, humanoids, aliens, and so forth.
2 Sorfa (2016: 3) supports this argument, suggesting that at least some films are capable of doing philosophy – “in a way that is unique to the medium,” of course.
3 Camus’ 1956 novel, The Fall, is an interesting case in which Camus deviates from his own rule according to which a good novel should have its hidden philosophy wholly translated into images. While generally possessing characteristics of the conventional novel, Roberts (2008: 876) regards it as an “essay-novel,” an uncategorizable hybrid “similar in form and content to a long and personalized philosophical essay in the manner of Kierkegaard or of Plato’s dialogues.” Its discourse explicitly covers a diverse philosophical territory, addressing ontological, ethical, political, and aesthetic topics, but without taking care to develop its ideas in a “tight sequential, logical fashion” (ibid., 882). This style, Roberts argues, aims to foster in the reader a reflection that cannot be achieved through abstract philosophical ideas, since The Fall uniquely considers these ideas “in relation to their contexts”; it thus allows us to recognise the imperfections, tensions and contradictions, as well as the power and insight of these ideas (ibid., 882). Roberts concludes that The Fall demonstrates Camus’ ability to “bridge different genres of writing: to allow the literary to become philosophical via the forms of reflection engendered in the reader” (ibid., 885).
4 In this book I ignore the somewhat justified political criticism of many American science fiction films, which posits that what truly hides behind the mask of the alien “other” is the subaltern non-white or non-American other. For instance, American films of the postwar era should be suspected for having projected fear of the Japanese onto sci-fi epics in the form of “alien invasion” (S. Skrimshire 2018, personal communication, 17 July). I, however, limit myself to the metaphysical nonhuman/human interpretation.
5 Zaretsky (2013: 48) describes how Camus, in a meeting with the British philosopher A. J. Ayer, “agreed with Ayer’s dim view of his philosophical reasoning.”
6 A paraphrase of Mulhall’s statement that he has “a sense that there is an open border between philosophy and literature” (Baggini 2018).
7 The Camusean notion of the feeling of the absurd as a primordial condition that lays the foundations for the concept of the absurd (MS, 27) can be compared with Ratcliffe’s definition of “existential feelings”, that is, feelings that relate to “the world as a whole”, rather than intentional states, which are directed at objects in the world (2012: 1–2).
8 Though, as I will argue in Chapter 2, the essential origin of the feeling can be detected and analyzed.
9 Baggini (2018) goes further by claiming that this is where film and philosophy may overlap: their aspiration to “represent reality to us truthfully in such a way as to make us understand it better or more accurately than before,” with the exception that film shows rather than says.
10 One exception is Alan Woodfolk, who explores Camus’ absurdism in film noir (Conard 2006: 107–124), as well as in the science fiction film Alphaville (Sanders 2008: 191–205).
11 See, for example, 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968; The Abyss 1989; Contact 1997; Dark City 1998; Prometheus 2012; Interstellar 2014; Moon 2009; Gravity 2013.
12 Here I borrow words Camus used to describe the absurdist characteristic of man’s encounter with nature (MS, 12–13).
13 Sci-fi films are also produced in Russia and Asia, for instance, yet they are often treated as “American” and “Western” products or as imitations; moreover, one cannot deny the clear hegemonic position of Hollywood in science fiction film production (Fritzsche 2014: 3).
14 This, we will see, is most ironically noticeable in films that deal with artificial intelligences that assimilate human emotions and behaviors (for instance, 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968; Blade Runner 1982; A.I. Artificial Intelligence 2001; Never Let Me Go 2010; Cloud Atlas 2012; Her 2013; Ex-Machina 2014).
