[Flora on a cold planet lit by a green sun (Killiney 2018). Foto Rb]
Introduction[1]
The first part of this paper, published in this issue, proposes to look at some international science-fiction films that explore human
society and behaviour in either a negative or positive light, and more
specifically in terms of dystopia and utopia. The second part, to be published in the next issue of Carte allineate, will focus mainly on
some essays on post-humanism and inequality. On the whole, this paper expresses
a need to re-centre humanist ethical and aesthetic values.
1. Some samples of 21st century dystopian and utopian science
fiction
Commercialized dystopian
science fiction worldwide, accompanied by an ideology of cynicism and an
aesthetics of spectacular exaggeration, seems to be one of the current prevalent
strategies of literary and cinematic globalized representation of the imminent
future.
A Western example is the
series of films The Hunger Games, directed by Francis
Lawrence and Gary Ross (2012-2015), based on Suzanne Collins’ novels. This
group of films depicts a social dystopian society where the politics of the
ruling elite are all-winning, but the oppressed finally stage a revolt. Its aesthetics
appears rather excessive in portraying the killing techniques of the archery-based
games which give the title to the series, and in depicting the violent means adopted
by strong-willed adolescent heroes to lead a revolution. The main social background
is progressive and supports collective action, but the motif of brutal combat is
commercial. One might argue that, by contrast to its anti-establishment
political ideology, the action side of the film aims at entertaining and increasing
sales.
An Eastern example might be Korean
director Bong Joon Ho’s film Snowpiercer (2013),
based on Transperceneige, a graphic
novel by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette.[2]
As the present author stated in a previously published essay,[3] this film combines synergies of Eastern and Western cinematography and it
constitutes a globalized popular product for consumption, intended for those
who like fast action and violence. The message conveyed is rather black since the
plot focuses on the fight of human beings against their fellow human beings until
most die. Yet, the survival of two innocent young characters, a girl and a boy,
would seem to indicate the possibility of a post-apocalyptic positive future of
rebirth of humankind.
More moderate in spectacular aesthetics and more serious in thoughtful content,
though still a partly cliched action work deploying use of martial arts, is
Japanese film Cutie Honey: Tears (2017), directed by Asai
Takeshi, a story of integration as well as conflict between humans and cyborgs
in a dystopian society. A final duel ends with the defeat of evil dictatorial
political power, and it is therefore suggested that dystopia based on greed,
inequality and insane totalitarianism might give way to the utopia of wiser
humans and cyborgs able to cooperate and cope with excessively uneven class
distinction, environmental pollution, and the peril represented by emotionless cynicism.
Several more recent examples
of globalized spectacular science fiction might be quoted here, including
perhaps, most famously, the recent episodes of the Star Wars saga, the so-called Sequel
Trilogy (2015-2017), directed by J.J. Abrams and Ryan Johnson, in which
freedom fighters operate in action stories that are typical in commercial
entertainment, thus standing a few steps apart from philosophical reflection, accurate
representation of the negative sides of society, and realistic portrayal of a
credible war situation. Surely the archetypal fight of Shadow (“the dark side”) against Wisdom adds interesting Jungian connotations to this story,[4] yet its potential for social
analysis and introspection is obscured by exaggerated evil doing and noisy
battles similar both to cliched air duels from Second World War movies and fast
contemporary video games.
Dystopia and utopia could be a
way to identify the plague of society and ways out of them. This was the case with
world-wide well known classic predecessors, such as Lucian, Jonathan Swift, and
H.G. Wells in Western literature. In the East, with due caution for difference
in philosophical approaches between Europe and China, one could perhaps mention
Confucius, and even Mao Zedong as Douwe Fokkema does,[5] and among the numerous modern
utopian and dystopian classics from Japan, one of the most prominently
translated into Western languages is Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s Kappa.[6] However, contemporary spectacular
commercialization defeats the committed purpose of this kind of works because,
as suggested by the cinematic examples listed above, it results, partly if not
entirely, in banalization of serious questions, accompanied by mere
entertainment which is at contrast with dramatic sociological scenarios.
Perhaps, what we need in the
place of 21st-century spectacular dystopia is a projection towards
constructive changes in mentality, and a realistic, yet imaginative belief that
the future can be modified to the benefit of sentient beings. On the level of
aesthetics, a reflective and non-spectacular poetics, addressed to the analysing
mind and the compassionate emotions of film-goers, might be preferable to loud
and violent shows and special effects. Let us see two examples: Jennifer
Phang’s film Advantageous (2015), and
a film directed by Denis Villeneuve, entitled Arrival (2016) and based on Ted Chiang’s “Story of your life”.[7]
A few words, first, on Advantageous.
The style of this socially committed science fiction film is elegant. It averts
sensational statements and imagery, thus enhancing its content in a thoughtful,
and therefore intellectually effective way. The acting has good theatrical
quality. The main topic is the development of automation and artificial
intelligence with a number of negative social consequences such as high rates
of unemployment, increase of inequality, the collapse of the middle class, and
in particular the social disadvantage of women. The fifty-year-old woman-model
and manager protagonist, confronted with being fired due to age, and in order
to keep an adequate level of employment, undertakes an experiment conducted by
her firm, during which her brain is transferred into a younger body. The
operation is successful, but a number of problems appear in her second life, in
particular her maternal love vanishes, and as a result her emotions change and
her family life is damaged. In addition to the main themes of eugenics and the
evolution of work in an imminent post-human future, this thoughtful film
mentions terrorist attacks that take place in the background among the
indifference of most spectators; future technological objects imagined
functionally and realistically; high-rising urbanization; in brief a future
that we can understand and on which we have to reflect because it derives from
problems we are beginning to confront now.
Moving on to Arrival, we
witness the landing of an extra-terrestrial spaceship piloted by non-anthropomorphic
beings called “Eptapodes”. A team of Earthlings attempt to decipher their
difficult language comprised of “semagrams”, or circular symbols
carrying meaning. This language is predictive, and its scientific foundation
can be found in Fermat’s principle: “light travels between two
points along the path that requires the least time, as compared to other nearby
paths”.[8] The Eptapode language can see into the future, but
a component of free-will is entrusted to the choice to follow or not follow
predestined paths. The Eptapodes have come to Earth to help human beings
because they know the planet Earth is in danger, and they predict an emergency in
their own planet which will be helped by Earthlings in the long-term of three
millennia. This is why, before they suddenly and somewhat inexplicably take
off, the Eptapodes leave an unspecified gift, but one can guess the gift is
their language itself. Human interpretation of this language prevents a war
among the superpowers of our planet and opens a future of collaboration and
unification between all countries on Earth. This story is complex, well-articulated,
rather intellectual but not especially elitist, it is in fact democratically intended
for a wide audience at multiple levels of education. The film is visually
moderate in special effects, yet imaginative and surreal, with the aliens’
spaceship partly comparable to paintings by Magritte, and a curved variation on
Stanley Kubrick’s monolith from 2001: A
Space Odissey. The utopian last section of Arrival prefigures a future in which human beings have to
collaborate with each other for survival. The actors are not superhuman but
ordinary beings. A pensive film, it runs opposite to the main trend of flashy and
trivial plots.
Other than dystopia as found in Advantageous,
we have utopia in Arrival, yet in
both cases science fiction is adopted for its potential to engage audiences to
react rationally to sociological ideas on the “risk society” in which we
already live,[9] and
analyse the human condition also from psychological and existential
perspectives.
From a global angle, in addition to multicultural aspects in the life of
United States authors Phang and Chiang (Phang’s Vietnamese and Malaysian-Chinese
heritage, and Chiang’s Chinese parents), one could mention the attention paid
by French Canadian director Villeneuve to initial divergence and final
cooperation between China and the West. Furthermore, the Eptapode language might
originate from Oriental characters rather than a Western alphabet. There is a
serious scientific and linguistic substratum, and the representation of the other under the guise of an extra-terrestrial
civilization is politically correct since it depicts biological difference of
non-humans from humans while it enhances the importance of intercultural
communication and mutual understanding. These non-cliched cosmopolitan
comparisons and integrations of intellectual elements are indeed deeper than
the stereotyped references of some science fiction films from Hollywood to
Eastern culture simply by means of devices such as Oriental martial arts.
[Roberto Bertoni]
[1] This is a virtual Presentation Paper for ACAH 2018, The Asian Conference
on the Arts and Humanities, Kobe, Japan - March 30 to April 1, 2018.
[2] Transperceneige
(graphic novel 1984-2000), Tournai, Casterman, 2013.
[3] Roberto Bertoni, “East/West Interaction in
Some Comics Written in French”, in Roberto Bertoni, ed., Aspects of science fiction
since the 1980s: China, Italy, Japan, Korea, Trinity College
Dublin and Trauben Turin, 2015, pp. 23-42.
[4] As noted, among others, by Christopher
Booker in The Seven Basic Plots,
London and New York, Continuum, 2014.
[5] Dowe Fokkema, Perfect Worlds: Utopian Fiction in China and the West, Amsterdam
University Press, 2011. See in particular, in Chapter 7, the section entitled
“The Confucian Concept of Perfect Virtue”, pp. 166-171, and Chapter 15, “Mao
Zedong’s Utopian Thought and the Post-Mao Imaginative Response”, pp. 321-344.
[6] Among essays on Japanese utopia and
dystopia, see Susan J. Napier, The
Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity,
London and New York, Routledge, 1996. See in particular Chapters 5, “Logic of
Inversion: Twentieth-Century Japanese Utopias”, and Chapter 6, “The Dystopian
Imagination: From the Asylum through the Labyrinth to the End of the World”,
pp. 141-220.
[7] Ted Chang, Stories of Your Life and Others, London, Picador, 2015. Previous
versions of the ideas expressed here on Advantageous
and Arrival had been published in
Italian under the form of reviews in online journal Carte allineate (ISSN 2009-7123), available from:
and:
http://cartescoperterecensionietesti.blogspot.ie/2016/12/denis-villeneuve-arrival.html.
[8]
http://scipp.ucsc.edu/~haber/ph5B/fermat09.pdf.
[9] See Ulrich Beck, Risk Society, London, Sage, 2002.
