Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema Dossier

Edited by Fabrizio Cilento (Associate Prof. of Film and Digital Media) and the Messiah College students. Special thanks to Gwen Collier and to the participants of theMethods and Issues in Film Studies senior seminar, and the collaborators on the project Cinemablography (http://www.cinemablography.org).

This is the first of two dossiers that Film Matters dedicates to the exploration of recent science fiction cinema. While criticizing the present, science fiction explores and stages alternative worlds and ways of organizing society. How does science fiction explore the nature of the sociopolitical tensions that confront us, the possible consequences and possible solutions? How can we envision the world differently by imagining enhanced or post-apocalyptic futures? What does this cinematic genre tell us about ourselves and the age of technological Renaissance in which we live? How has it been impacted by the proliferation of special effects? Conversely, what is the heritage of its foundational masterpieces and why are they more relevant than ever today? The three authors address such questions in original ways and though specific case studies. Nicole Veneto (Simmons College) provides a psychoanalysis on the racial and gender politics at play in the The Force Awakens(J.J. Abrams, 2015), with a particular emphasis onwhite male discomfort towards the threat of female and racial minority ascension to power.  Julia Glick (University of California, Berkley) argues that on a surface level, Ex Machina(Alex Garland, 2015) fosters cultural anxieties over technology and cyborgs taking advantage of outsmarting their human creators, but the film delves much deeper by exploring differential alliances between opposing cyborg figures. The dossier also explores how contemporary science fiction successfully hybridized with other film genres and subgenres, such as the western and the zombie movie, as Mynt Marsellus (Wilfrid Laurier University) does in relation to The Walking Dead(AMC, 2010 – ). Enriched by a series of recent book and film reviews by Messiah College students Natalie Moey, Megan Hess, Emmanuel Gundran, and Perri Chastulik, the scope of the dossier links classic 20^thcentury film theory with issues related to contemporary imaginings of digital cinema and virtual simulations.