Cyborgs, capitalism, hope: a study of Hong Kong and Hollywood science fiction films

Abstract

Posthuman representations in selected Hollywood and Hong Kong science fiction films show new interconnections in “techno-globalization.” They also exhibit a waning relationship between the “center” and the “margin” of technoculture. This study discusses the relation of technology, humanity, affect, and aesthetics in selective science fiction films produced from 1984 to 2010. The science fiction features were made in the United States and in Hong Kong. They include: The Terminator (1984), Terminator2 (1991), Terminator Salvation (2009), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2002), I Love Maria (1988), Kung Fu Cyborg (2009) and Future X-Cops (2010). In particular, Kung Fu Cyborg merges the popular genre conventions of martial arts and technoculture, and manifests a different imagination at work wherein Hong Kong’s martial arts cinema stands in the place of a scientific-based Western technoculture absent in Hong Kong science fiction films. This study presents several key critical frames elaborated by scholars of science fiction who have assessed the recurrent themes and figures of science fiction films. The discussion of films identifies the resemblances, the differences, and the competitive dynamic between American science fiction films and Hong Kong action features. The absence of utopian or dystopian figures in posthuman filmic representations in Hong Kong cinema is considered an important difference from Western science fiction films. This thesis examines the figure of the cyborg and argues for the important place of emotions and the power to emote and hope as having a complex relationship to technology, humans and humanness. The compassionate cyborg has temporal and moral dimensions relating to belief and religion in this important genre. Thus, this thesis examines the backdrop for science fiction affect, which is one of oppression and crisis that speaks to the conditions of capitalism and modernity. The affective cyborgs make an important figure in the science fiction films that concern the crisis conditions, the appeal of technology, and the conventions of science fiction genre in commercial cinema.