Dynamic Subspace

Category: Movies

  • Wall-E, Terrific Science Fiction

    Y and I just got back home from seeing Pixar’s latest animated film, Wall-E, at the single screen Highland Theatre in Akron, Ohio.  It’s everything but a “silly cartoon.”  I have to tell you–Wall-E is TERRIFIC Science Fiction, and GREAT filmmaking!

    I’ve seen every film by Pixar except for the Toy Story series, and I’ve enjoyed all that I’ve seen thus far.  However, Wall-E surpasses all of their previous work through a well-thought out story, amazing cinematography, good examples of real-world physics, and the interweaving of American consumer culture with capitalistic-paternalism and eco-disaster.  The most striking element of the film goes back to Leo Marx’s work, The Machine in the Garden, but I believe Wall-E is emblematic of how Marx is wrong.  Marx’s thesis is that American literature imagines an idyllic garden which has been lost and is reattainable through the embrace of technology, but the lost Edenic pastoral is gone forever, and technological progress pushes us further away from it.  The characters of Wall-E and his girlfriend, Eve, show humanity the way toward regaining what we’ve lost through two key scenes (one in the film, and the other during the end credits).  The earlier scene has Eve take Wall-E’s plant offering into what is best described as a womb.  There, the plant is safe until returned to the corporate robot controlled Axiom starship (accepted/unquestioned truth, wow, what a perfect name!).  Wall-E and Eve keep the plant safe, and reawaken obese humanity’s connection with (mother) Earth.  Then, during the end credits, there are developing scenes in a variety of stylzied animations covering cave paintings to Egyptian heiroglyphics to Impressionism.  In these scenes, the garden is recreated by the cooperation of humanity with its autonomous robotic creations.

    Wall-E is a really fun movie for all ages, and I guarantee that you’ll be as enchanted as I was by this amazing Science Fiction allegory!

  • The Cigarette Smoking Man and Ms. Yutani in AVP2 Requiem

    Another interesting aspect of AVP2 Requiem is the appearance of the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files. Okay, so the character is called Colonel Stevens, and he’s played by Robert Joy and not William B. Davis. However, he serves a similarly shady function within the AVP2 narrative. This American government/military official donning a black suit instead of uniform, orders the nuclear strike on the small town Alien infestation. Additionally, after the survivors make it out of the blast zone, they are intercepted by Special Forces members, who disarm them of the Predator energy weapon. This weapon in turn is then given by Col. Stevens to Ms. Yutani (Françoise Yip). This is an interesting development, because it serves to strengthen the bonds between government and corporate bodies. As you may know, Yutani is the other half of Weyland-Yutani, the mega-corporation from the original Alien and Aliens films (the Weyland aspect of the corporate puzzle is explained in AVP with the appearance of Charles Bishop Weyland played by Lance Henriksen). AVP2 does not go into the reasons why a government official would give otherworldly technology to a corporation, and my assumption is that this is a retelling and continuation of Cold War tropes embedded in Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex. Perhaps this signifies the hard currency payback by the government for its wholesale purchase by corporate interests in the here-and-now.

    More AVP2 commentary on Dynamic Subspace here and here.

  • More Thoughts on Forced Fellatio in AVP2 Requiem

    There’s one point that I didn’t make that clear in my last posting on Aliens Vs. Predator Requiem and that is the underlying problematic nature of the hybrid Alien-Predator. It signifies the ambiguous sex of transsexuals. Its body contains the Predator’s vagina-like mouth, which in turn houses the Alien’s phallus-like mouth extension. Through this imagery of design, the Alien-Predator hybrid represents both the female and male sexes. Which leads me to wonder if the Alien-Predator hybrid’s forcing a pregnant woman to have unnaturally impregnating fellatio represents a culturally derived fear of transsexuals and the intersexed? Is the Alien-Predator hybrid the new barbarian at the gates? Intersexed persons are most definitely individuals and human subjects, so how do these SF images of the marauding/barbaric/primitive/animal Alien-Predator hybrid Other challenge cultural progress in regards to sex and gender? It’s time to reread Sandy Stone’s “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.”

  • On Forced Deep Throat in Aliens Vs. Predator Requiem

    On Christmas Day, 2007, I went to see Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem with Ryan, Jarret, Bert, and Stacey. Considering the poor quality of the first Aliens Vs. Predator film, and the general decline of the franchise in general (Aliens is clearly the high-water mark), I wasn’t expecting much from this film. Despite the dreadful story and horror film hijinks, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was something worth discussing embedded within the film. However, I don’t say that flippantly, because it involves serious subject matter in need of reflection away from the glare of the big screen.

    This latest installment of the Aliens vs. Predator films is extremely troubling regarding gender, sex, and sexuality. As has been commented elsewhere, Giger’s Aliens are phallocentric with mouths extending beneath the foreskin of the upper cranial case. The crab-like parasites that implant/impregnate potential hosts with the alien egg/embryo are traditionally the means by which the Alien life cycle is completed (Queen lays egg > crab-like parasite implants host > an Alien emerges from the host, developing in part based on the genetic material of the host). Also, the crab-like parasites have a long tail for strangulating the host/victim and thereby forcing the host to accept the implantation from the parasite via a long penis-like extension from beneath its body that enters the mouth and throat of the host to implant the egg/embryo.

    Predators on the other hand have never been shown to reproduce on film, but it’s unavoidable to note the terrible resemblance between a Predator’s mouth and the myth of the vagina dentata. It’s only due to an assumption that I first considered Predators male. In the films, their sex and reproduction systems are not explored. They could be a species involving male/female sexing, or considering the fact that these are aliens, they could have a multiplicity of sexes involved in reproduction. In any event, what’s important to consider is the chosen appearance of Predators to have the male anxiety producing (disfigured) vagina dentata.

    Aliens Vs. Predator Requiem begins where AVP left off. The fallen Predator warrior initiate is brought onboard the Predator starship, and a new, before unseen Alien potential bursts from the Predator’s chest: an Alien-Predator hybrid. This hybrid wreaks havoc onboard the Predator ship, which subsequently crash-lands in the woodland area near small town America. In this environ, the Alien-Predator hybrid matures into a formidable creature combining Predator strength and Alien voraciousness. Crab-like parasites onboard the Predator spacecraft escape and impregnate human hosts, which begins an epidemic in small town America.

    It’s assumed that through some biological process, an Alien hive produces a Queen much like with ants or bees. However, the Alien-Predator hybrid of Requiem is unlike any previously presented Alien Queen. In the other films, an Alien Queen is very large and (initially) stationary in a warm place to lay eggs containing the crab-like parasite. The Alien-Predator hybrid of Requiem develops into a new kind of Queen. Instead of having an ovipositor (using ant terminology) at the rear of its body, the Alien-Predator hybrid is an evolutionary leap that does away with the need for the crab-like parasite.

    The Alien-Predator hybrid has a unique delivery system for implanting hosts with an egg/embryo. As shown in the hospital scene toward the end of Requiem, the Alien-Predator hybrid leans over a pregnant woman, opens its Predator mouth folds (think: labia with claws), and forces the Alien-derived mouth extension down her throat. This represents an unavoidable image of forced deep throat, gagging, and swallowing. This already pregnant woman is made to swallow the “seed” of this hybrid sexed creature that in this juxtaposition fills a male role, but an unnatural one of oral impregnation. The result of this impregnation is graphically revealed when multiple Aliens burst forth from the woman’s belly (possibly having devoured the uterus and the unborn human fetus).

    What does the Alien-Predator hybrid mean in a wider cultural context? Is this the extreme SF retelling of Knocked Up? Is this an example of male anxiety over childbirth and childrearing? Or, is this new film image a reflection of the backlash against women’s rights following Third Wave Feminism? What about modes of production and reproduction? Each of these are possibilities, as are others, and they should be considered further in regard to this latest film in the popular and on-going Alien and Predator series.

    It would be interesting to learn more about the films written, produced, and directed by the team behind Requiem. Is this film part of a trend, or is this a one-off produced to titillate and gross-out the audience (building on the overt horror theme of the film)? Just glancing at the work of The Brothers Strause, they come from a visual effects background, so this could be nothing more than originating from a geek impulse to push the effects envelop. Nevertheless, this image is projected for many people to see, so it has significance beyond the intentions of the films creators and that’s the aspect in need of exploration.

    For my friends not familiar with my work as an academic–this is the kind of research that I do. I look at the significance of cultural works in order to interpret and discover meaning. The intentions of the creators, perhaps compelling or interesting, are nonetheless unimportant and generally disregarded in terms of the way the work figures into a wider cultural sense. How can a work be read? How was a work produced (not necessarily literally by hands, but out of a cultural milieu or historical epoch)? How might a work reflect some aspect of culture, and what does that mean?

  • Transformers Review

    Michael Bay’s latest SF film, Transformers (2007), is a slick and action packed summer blockbuster brimming with special effects that succeeds in ways that I had not expected it to do so. Of course, there are the obligatory cheesy lines, full-frontal scenes of people running away from something insanely scary right on their tail, and massive explosions and demolition. Luckily, the film goes beyond its clichés and one liners. On the surface, the film is about a one-dimensional conflict between the good Autobots who serve as humanity’s protectors and the evil Decepticons who aspire to kill and destroy on the path to the life generating “Cube.” However, the film is about much more than meets the eye.

    The film begins with American soldiers in Iraq returning from a patrol to their base where their fellow soldiers are working, showering, and playing basketball. This peaceful scene of Army life is soon shattered as the Decepticon Blackout and his passenger Scorponok descend into the camp disguised as a Sikorsky helicopter. The camp is decimated and only our returning patrol heroes live to escape and fight another day.

    This crew led by Captain Lennox (Josh Duhamel) eventually kill Scorponok with the help of a laser guided air strike and they are recalled to the United States for a full debriefing. However, their return to the States results in the war, once thought of as “over there,” being transfered to the American homeland.

    These soldiers fight along side the good robots called Autobots, who are led by Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). They find themselves fighting the powerful Decepticons who are led by Megatron (Hugo Weaving). Belying the fact that these American soldiers are fighting killer robots, is that they are fighting a war against an enemy that can blend into its surroundings. The enemy is literally a transformer–capable of transforming from the obvious threat of a giant, intelligent robot to something dangerous yet less threatening due to its terrestrial origins such as a tank, helicopter, plane, cell phone, or boom box (the latter two examples conjure the invasion of the camera phone and spying and the boom box is the harbinger of subversive music).

    Even more problematic than the metamorphosis of these giant robots is that the battle is shifted from Iraq (i.e., somewhere else) to America (i.e., the untouched, virginal homeland). The battle between Autobots and Decepticons took place long ago on their obliterated homeplanet, Cybertron. Now, they have brought their fight here to Earth in search of the Cube, an artifact capable of creating artificial life. The Autobots have a noble mission to prevent the Decepticons from obtaining the Cube while protecting humanity in its, to their perspective, infancy. This maps onto American’s own involvement in wars such as Afghanistan and Iraq. In the former, we set out to remove the Taliban from power and in the latter, to depose Saddam Hussein. In both cases, American forces remain to preserve stability and fight off insurgent forces (human transformers). Ultimately, these foreign battles are revisited on America in the mythical “Mission City” where Sam Witwicky (Shia Labeouf) aided by Bubblebee are to hide the Cube. The Decepticons arrive en force to wreak havoc on their way to taking the Cube from the Autobots’ and humanity’s protection. There are telling shots of Megatron and Starscream, both capable of flight, of going through some of the city’s highrise buildings much as the planes of the 9/11 Attacks did in 2001.

    These attacks culminate with Sam saving the day, but without truly up-holding his family’s motto, “no sacrifice, no victory.” In the end, one Autobot has been killed, but the central cast has survived and his family is assumed to be in the care of the government. Optimus Prime tries to be the sacrifice to save humanity from the voracity of the Decepticons (and he says this several times during the film), but it’s Sam final decision that saves Prime and humanity from an untimely end. Sam, as the prototypical American hero not by brawn but my family heritage and therefore history, represents a failure in fulfilling his family motto which is as much an American belief system as it is his family’s motto. Thus, the motto and what it represents breaks down in the face of the movie’s conclusion just as American triumphalism gave way to the American identity crisis during the Cold War. I would like to note that there are other ways of reading the ending of the film, but I don’t want to go into further details without giving away anything beyond the movie’s obvious ending.

    Transformers is an enjoyable SF film that actually carries a bigger message than robot warriors are destined to fight while dragging humanity along for the ride. For the naysayers who decry the Autobots’ naivety and simplicity in the film, I direct them to watch the Saturday morning cartoons of the 1980s where they’ll find Bay has kept much closer to the source material than one might wish to believe he had. The film updates the core story with contemporary issues and the latest in transportation developments since the cartoon first debuted in 1984. I recommend the movie as both an SF film worthy of a second look and as a summer blockbuster complete with the “transforming sound” and Peter Cullen’s distinctive voice as Optimus Prime.

    Visit the official site for more information, and check out the film’s trailers here.