Avatar and Children of Men each perfectly fit the mold of "science fiction" as discussed during our Haraway week: these films are not about accurately projecting a hypothetical future, but rather, they are mediums to show the frustrations of our present. Both offer commentaries on contemporary society, and are lenses through which we can observe the symptoms of our current relationships with race. Sci-Fi cinema is a tarot - our imagined futures allow us to understand our present.
Ethan's post deliberates on colorblindness, and raises important questions through Children of Men's tarot lens. Ethan draws out a question we've reached numerous times throughout the semester: what is at stake in putting a person of difference (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc) on screen? If we try to pursue Gilroy's ideal of going "against race," don't we disavow the common senses that still linger, and wind up quietly re-presenting racialized others as colonized cliche? On the other hand, if we directly affirm that race still marginalizes, then what? Simply showing positive multicultural images does not break Fanon's hellish loop - that only makes the racialized other "feel better" temporarily. My vote goes to the motion in Keeling's explosion, Harraway's ironic cyborg, and Dobson's playful therapy.
Somewhat unrelated... here is a tenuous read:
In Children of Men, can we consider Britain as a melancholic ego structured through a lost object? But what is the object? Is it race? Human history? All other civilizations have collapsed, history is losing significance, and the broader world population is veering toward a multicultural melting pot. Are these not the tensions against which we define Children of Men's Britain? How does the moment of the baby crying play into this? Does that explode a common sense maintaining Britain as ego?
I'd also be game to talk about Avatar, passing, and racial tourism. It seems like there is a lot to explore, and I think it could be worth parsing out the popular reads that declare the film as latently racist
"Sci-Fi cinema is a tarot - our imagined futures allow us to understand our present."
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this -- I am going to keep this in mind for my final project, a science fiction story, because I was struggling to understand how science fiction could be about both the future and the present.