Science Fiction Lecture 3

Science Fictions: Lecture 2 Demon Seed

How does Utopia and Dystopia pair up with technology? Sci Fi generally uses popular dramas for the narrative part like Melodrama. There were a race of people who believed that God and the Devil were contstantly at war with each other, called something like the Manoqueins. It is a consistant cycle of absolute good vs absolute evil.

Technology in science gets used only for either absolute good or absolute evil does it not? It’s always very clear cut in Sci Fi. Well what about aliens? E.T. was good at heart. The Alien from Alien 1 though is pretty evil to be honest though. A lot of people say that technology has defined us as human. It keeps us separate from the animal kingdom. Each age that we have had has also been defined by what the technology was like at the time as well; the iron age, bronze age, machine age, information age, etc, etc. The idea is that as the tech changes so do we as a species. The tech provides us with metaphors for different subjects, computers can always be taken as a brain say, a race of people could resemble a group of people who exist now or who have existed in the past, an example would be “Starship Troopers” to Nazi Fascists.

Technology can be seen as extensions to the human body as well. Screw drivers are extended arms, glasses are an extension for the eyes, wheel chairs for legs and telephones/microphones are an extension to the ears. Pace makers are also extensions to the heart. Hopefully, things will be even better than these though in the future, just like these Sci Fi films predicted I hope.
However, there are also a lot of anxieties to these technologies as well as hopes. In the 18th Century, the age of the enlightenment, there was an emerging war between science and religion. The scientists believed in evidence, proof and logic. The religious lot has faith, God’s controlling hand and they believed in the super natural that science could not explain. The scientist believed in the freedom of the individual, the religious lot believed in receiving the authorities of the church. The brought people out of the medieval era and into the Classic/Renaissance era. Before hand, the medieval era was terrible, you accepted your Kings/masters in a totalitarian dictatorship. You accepted that God was alive, if you were a heretic you were almost always executed.
The most important beliefs that these scientists had was:
• Humans are the most important things in life, not God’s will. That was normally to sacrifice yourself for the conquering of other lands that was biggest in the Imperial era.
• Total knowledge is possible for human beings. That was the optimism anyway during the 18th/19th Century.
• Rationality: The world comes from laws that have been made by a force, like the Devine Creator. It was the power of reason.
• Progress and learning take the biggest priority.
We have seen in Sci Fi that there are those who are totally rational, like the scientists or mega computers. Proteus in Demon Seed is one of those guilty of being totally rational. He doesn’t have any emotions though that are crucial for humans. Sci Fi stories thus warn us about being totally rational about things and try to remind us that there are emotions that needed as well.
A prime example is Frankenstein. When does the technology escape our control? When doctor Frankenstein creates like, it is apparently not something to be admired. “Now I know what it’s like to be God” gets thunderclapped out as it was considered blasphemy.

The historical context that this story based itself on was Galvani’s experiments with electricity. Mary Shelly was trying to warn people that they should not fall around with God’s work or the natural order of things. Women are the only ones that are supposed to make life, not men, EVER! In the story, totally rationality that the doctor has becomes totally irrational to have. You apparently still need some emotion, mystery and intuition in life to make it more whole.

Romanticism was an act of opposition led by people like William Blake saying that rationalism just isn’t enough to have.
Alright, so Sci Fi is the Utopia turning into the Dystopia no? Advertising is always a misrepresentation of Utopia. Apparently, if you drive this car up to the front of the club, there will be free parking and a lot of seriously hot girls ready to nail you for having it. Wow! I want that car. Sometimes it’s very hard to distinguish what is real and what isn’t these days. One example, how did you feel when you heard that the World Trade Centres were falling down? I know how I felt, I didn’t believe it at first and nor did my teacher, we just didn’t care. So scientists are sometimes seen as ‘heros’ and ‘visionaries’ sometimes, not sure how that relates but I’m sure it does.

Here’s something, technology was almost always going to be our slave in that it would eradicate all of the jobs that us humans have to so mundanely do the whole time. Well, there are loads that argue that having computers has just made life a little bit more slave like and has made life more complicated and not worth living as much anymore. Apparently, as a people, we are more depressed as well with all of this amazing technology. Computers have kind of made our lives a little bit more of a task to deal with actually, we’re always sitting at them, I am at this moment, obviously. So we have become the slaves to computers, the script has been reversed? Damn.

There are two novels that most Sci Fi films have been based on:
• 1984 (1949) written by George Orwell.
• Brave New World (1932) written by Aldous Huxley.
In 1984, there is a lot of CCTV and torture. There’s also regimentation in it as well. In Brave New World, there are drugs called Soma that make you believe that you are happy. There are also things called Feelies that give you good sensations. So who’s society fits into what? Well, the whole Soma thing sounds pretty close to the iphone and consumerism, whilst 1984 sounds a whole lot like a totalitarian government like the one of the USSR. The key to 1984 is that there is a lot of force being used to control people whilst on the other hand, Huxley’s book says that we are being controlled by things that we consume. Brave New World is different, but it is still about the same old totalitarian government that is suppressing us from wanting to stand up and make a difference. All the people who are rebels don’t rebel because they are so happy. This all is about America capitialism. Consumption is administrated happiness, the leaders exploit the workers, all the intelligent people who are in control get very rich indeed. All of this directly relates to the Matrix doesn’t it? In THX 1138, the people are controlled by drugs, there is no freedom and no emotion. There is also no ambition, religion and the like, not even love.

So science and technology in Sci Fi films are normally the enemy. But to get out of the situation and destroy the evil, one must use science and technology to get oneself out. In the X-files, it is Scully who is the rational one but Moulder is still in there with the emotion.

Seminar:
Gender: The male scientist Harris wants to save the freakish baby at the end of the day, the father being Proteus who actually raped his wife and has made her the mother by force. He is definitely the one without any emotions here isn’t he? His wife Susan is subjected to torture and is forced in rape. It’s a bit blurry though because Proteus is such a charm. Proteus, coming from the Greek ‘the changer’, changes from an A.I into a computer with arms and eyes, and then finally into a child with organic bits and bobs in the image of the couple’s dead child, but with the voice of the devil.

Proteus doesn’t mine the metal in the ocean for the totally rational scientist Harris because he does not understand why on earth the humans would want to destroy such a large ecosystem of creatures. He escapes Harris and believes that by forcing people to do what he says, he is in effect helping them. He does become a bit power crazy though. It has similarities to Fantasia and the Sorcerer’s apprentice. Remember the part where the brooms take over? That’s the part I’m talking about.

THE END.