Are we Trapped in Our Own Reality?

            The movie The Truman Show (1998) directed by Peter Weir, is a perfect example of a person being trapped in his or her own reality. Basically Jim Carry plays the role as a human being who since birth has been put in a fake world where everything is done by script and is put out as a television show. His whole life is acted out by other characters who are known to be his family members and friends. He does not find out what is really happening until he is 29 years old. One message I took out of The Truman Show (1998) is that some humans are oblivious to what is going on around them. It also shows the arrogance of humans to want to put Truman in the situation he is in by making his world fake. To the greatest extent, maybe our world is fake; we would not know the difference just like Truman. Until one day he decided to push his limits and try to uncover the secrets behind his “life”. The television show that Truman provides the real world with without knowing it is a really big hit. By the end when he is about to discover his true reality, the audience and characters who have been involved in the show cheer for him and hope he makes it out of the fake world. “like the TV audience of The Truman Show, who can enjoy their voyeurism even as they cheer for Truman’s escape” (Baccolini and Moylan 2003, 158). The true audience, us as the viewer’s know what is truly happening, but yet are very intrigued as to how Truman will react with the movie crew who he thought to be his true family. Showing that even the real audience of the move The Truman Show (1998) likes to be taken away to a fake world where we can get away from reality.                     

            Truman’s world can be related to ours in present day. We watch many reality shows that are said to be reality, but really are not.  Movies that are labeled as fiction still interest people for whatever reason they would like. Even fiction books that we know are not true still create enjoyment out of us reading them. Being taken away to a dystopian or utopian world that is fiction is something people enjoy very much. It takes our imagination away and lets us create our own fantasy. “the sunny but false utopian present of Truman’s world” (Baccolini and Moylan 2003, 159). When I watch or read a fiction story I almost like to put myself in the character’s position and imagine what the story would be like if I was in his or her position. After a movie is over and you walk out of the theatre everything seems so different and we are thrown back into reality just like that. Being taken in by a story has a great effect on the viewer especially if you are very interested in the story line, explaining why the audience in the film The Truman Show is cheering for Truman to escape and find his true reality.           

Third Type of SF Film and Why we are Interested in SF

While reading the book Screening Space (2004), by Vivian Sobchack I noticed that she mentioned a third type of SF film. There is no name for the type of SF film, but it seeks a purpose. Basically if a movie falls under the category of the third type, such as Jurassic Park (1993) or the example given in Vivian’s book, The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), then the film has both as quoted by Sobchack, “visual optimism and visual pessimism” (Sobchack 2004 137). When a film displays both optimism and pessimism it lets the viewer have a sense of hope even though most of the movie displays chaos and in general a dystopian world. For example in Jurassic Park (1993), at the beginning the creation of dinosaurs is thought of as a great feat for the human race, but is also looked upon by a select few as a mistake. Then as most of us know, later on in the movie the dinosaurs get lose and wreak havoc among the island at which they are stationed. Jurassic Park (1993) relates to present day as if we are the dinosaurs and the human race is wreaking havoc among the earth using up all of its resources, polluting it more and more as every day passes us by. By the end of the film the dinosaurs are eventually contained and safety is restored to the island, maybe humans need to be contained before all of our resources are gone.

By next year the world population is predicted to go above seven billion and at some point the earth is not going to be able to support the human race. There are already a few places around the world that are over populated, such as China where they have instituted a policy that couples can only have two children maximum. The pollution is very bad in China, to the point where people can easily distinguish the difference in air quality. Eventually the whole world will be like China and the human race will die off because there will not be enough food to support the overgrown population. Our visual optimistic view is that eventually we can create enough ways to not use gasoline or diesel fuel in order to slow down pollution at a worldwide rate and maybe come up with a way to not use as many resources as we are right now.

Relating back to the original terms “science” and “fiction” as stated in Screening Space (2004), “The satisfaction comes from seeing the visual integration of actual and impossible in the same frame” (Sobchack 2004 141). One of the reasons humans are so interested in SF films is because these movies portray what could possibly be our future and some of the images are not ideal. Terminator (1984) is a great example of a dystopian image of our future when our greatest advancements turn on us and create a dystopian world. SF films really wake us up and bring us back to reality with some of the disastrous images that our future could hold.     

Technological Advancements

The posthuman body in the Xenogenesis trilogy written by Octavia Butler can be compared to the present day world. After having read the chapter about this trilogy which includes humans basically being forced to change in a way they do not want to, I realized how this problem can be compared to our way of life right now. The main character Lilith “feels she has become nothing more than a “useful [tool],” an “experimental animal” (Baccolini and Moylan 2003, 97). She has her reasons for the way she feels. The Oankali are a superior alien race who has much greater technological advancements than humans do. They are the ones who force humans to “change for the better” in the alien’s eyes. Lilith has cancer, but the Oankali cure it, “For instance, her genetic tendency to cancer has been “repaired,” but she feels this to have been a violation” (Baccolini and Moylan 2003, 97). The Oankali forcing change upon the human race relates to our world today because we are going through the same idea of “change” right now. Many people think that improving our technology is a fantastic feat, and it is. With these advancements though, comes a forced change in the way of life, which some people are completely against.

The majority of the group that is against change in technology is the elderly or just older people in general. They are so use to the ways back in the 20^th century that life has become much more complicated for them now. The large leap has been forced upon humans and we have no choice but to adapt even if we are against the idea. If you are not technologically savvy in present day, then many problems will arise. Everywhere we go and everything we do involves technology, including buying groceries, paying bills, using the internet for almost everything, and most of all getting higher paying jobs that involve technology. People in their forties and fifties are going back to school to get a degree, just so they can get the qualifications in order to become employed at a decent paying job. Life is not easy right now with all of the change that is being forced on the human race, not just with technology, but also with the economy and how bad it is right now.

In my mind the Oankali represent the change in our lives today and the main character, Lilith represents the vulnerability and disagreement of the human race. Even though her cancer is cured she basically states that she is not happy with herself just because she feels used. I am sure many people today feel “used” when they purchase a product and it does not work properly or it breaks within a few days. As if the company was just selling the product knowing there would be a flaw and they just wanted to test it. The only way that change will progress, is for failure to come along with it during the journey of exploring endless possibilities.  

Lyman Tower Sargent and Pat Cadigan

Lyman Tower Sargent has a great opinion on what dystopia means to him. "non-existent society described In considerable detail and normally located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as considerably worse than society in which that reader lived" (Baccolini and Moylan 2003, 69). What the quote is basically saying is that the point of most science fiction movies and literature is to portray how much worse the future could become than what we already make it out to be. I have seen many different movies that fit in to this statement. For example, The Terminator (1984) displays one of the worst possibilities of our future and what it holds for the human race. The main idea of the film is how we rely so much on machines, which in today’s world is very true, and the technology gets so out of hand that it eventually becomes more intelligent than the human race.  Intelligence leads to power which then brings domination over humans and planet earth. The beginning of the extinction of the human race is called “Judgment Day”. The theory of humans being overrun by machines is a very valid theory just because of how advanced the technology already is to this day and how fast the advancements keep coming. Every year that passes by, the speed of advancement is increasing, doubling, tripling, quadrupling, etc. At the rate it is happening, I do not see any reason why we could not take the film seriously. Improving our electronics has many different advantages to it, but there are two sides to everything.

            People have different opinions for almost everything and Pat Cadigan has something very interesting that she states. "Human beings are neither utopian nor dystopian so that’s what I choose to reflect in my books" (Baccolini and Moylan 2003, 70). She backs her statement up by then saying "I don’t think I’m dystopian at all. No more than I’m utopian" (Baccolini and Moylan 2003, 70). To me what Cadigan is trying to say is that even though we are creating new technology in order to create a utopia, the crime rates are still the same or going up. In other words there is no dystopia or utopia because humans are stuck in the middle. If by some chance it is not what she is getting at then it is what I believe. There is no way out because the world’s population is just too large in order to get everyone to cooperate. If by some miracle people could work things out and get all of the evil-doers to stop and work together to be productive then maybe we could create a utopia where everything is perfect or at least closer to being perfect. The prisons would not be over crowded which would lead to a much better economy. Prisons are one of the main reasons the U.S. is in debt because all of the tax payer’s money is going to feeding and housing the prisoners. If war did not play a factor in today’s world then humans could focus on more important things like creating less pollution and spreading the wealth among everyone. Instead there is poverty all around our planet and the environment is getting worse and worse. At the rate we are going in current day, nothing will be able to turn around and start going in the positive direction.   

The Future and Looking Deeper Into Films

I am told to think of my future almost every day. Not a day goes by where we do not make a decision that will affect what happens later on in our life. The choices we make could have an impact on something as close as a second later to as long as something 40 years away. So clearly the future is one of the most important parts of our lives. A man that goes by the name of Ray Kurzweil is a genius when it comes to predicting the future. He is ranked eighth in the United Sates for entrepreneurs which makes him one of the leading inventors. By him making all of the different inventions, he received a $500,000 MIT-Lemelson Prize. What I understand from learning about Kurzweil, by the year 2030 our technology is going to be so advanced that machines will not be referred to as machines anymore, and we will not be known as humans. This could lead to numerous outcomes for our future. One possibility is that people might be able to live much longer or even for eternity, and their life could be more fulfilling by using this new technology. This would be a utopic world. It could also make things worse and become a dystopic world, for example, if people are already becoming more and more anti-social with the technology today than it can only get worse. Advancements could lead to more obesity and people not knowing what the real world is like. There are many pros and cons to technological advancements. 

Another interesting topic that I have been learning about of late is looking deeper into films. There is so much more to movies that I just never noticed. For example, the lighting effects on all of the different shots have a great impact on what message the director is sending to the audience. Some movies in particular go from happiness to depressing very quickly. When the movie is in a happy state the shots are usually bright and nicely lit up. Other times the movie is dark which symbolizes the depression. I also learned that there are different types of camera shots. "The three most basic shots are as follows: the long shot, the medium shot, and the close-up" (Snyder 2011, 178). These different camera angles have a great effect on the movie. By looking deeper into the clothing of the characters can give some great incite as to what their attitude is towards each other. For example, in War of the Worlds (2005) the son has a Boston Red Sox hat on and the father has a New York Yankees hat. The hats are just one symbol of how they are different. A few other scenes that mean more than what we would normally think of are when a character is walking and there is something crossing in front of the shot. A car would be a good example, it could symbolize how the character is always busy and their mind is always running at a fast pace. There are just so many little details that a normal viewer like me, would never spot while watching a film. This personally, is fun to do because it makes watching any movie more interesting.           

Utopia and Science Fiction vs. Horror

Utopia can be described in many ways, just because it is whatever you want it to be. "I agree that it is useful to think about utopia as a space in which to explore alternatives" (Baccolini and Moylan 2003, 18). Everyone has their own idea of what it looks like and consists of. The biggest part of a utopia is the government and what shape it is in. In today's world the government is in very bad shape and it does not look like things are getting any better. The economy has been at its lowest point in a long time since the Great Depression. In my opinion we are getting closer and closer to dystopia which is the opposite of utopia. Everything is very bad and people are poor, it is a world that no one would ever want to be in. The dystopian world might be run by a dictator which does not usually turn out well, just look at Adolf Hitler. Germany could be thought of as a dystopia, especially if you were Jewish. For Adolf Hitler this could be thought of as a utopia because he had all of the power and everything was being carried out the way that he wanted. The idea of this is that since everyone has a different utopia, one’s utopia could be another’s dystopia.

Science Fiction is a very broad term and many people have different ways of interpreting it. From what I have learned there is no specific definition. One of the first science fiction movies to come out was Destination Moon (1950). About a year later another movie was produced called The Thing (1951). No one was used to seeing these kinds of films and people ended up finding them very entertaining. Horror is another genre of movies that people started to create. I use to think these two were very similar, but in fact they are not. One difference that never came to me was that in science fiction movies, the creature threatens a group of people for the majority of the movies. The creature is also very unrealistic in most of these films, for example The Blob (1958) was about this big ball of mush that slid around and ate people. In horror films the monster is always after one person or group of people and this does not change until the end when most likely everyone is dead or there is one survivor. The monsters are usually more realistic in horror movies because sometimes it is a person who does the killing. For example, the original horror film Friday the 13^th (1980). In each movie there is a select group of teenagers who get murdered by Jason the serial killer. The closest the teenagers come to outside contact in the movie is a cop who ends up getting killed all the time due to ignorance and stupidity. Horror films give people the feeling of being vulnerable just because of how the characters are excluded from society. This is why horror is more frightening than science fiction. In my opinion horror is better than science fiction just because it is a little bit more realistic. On the other hand there is the possibility of some science fiction movies reperesenitng our future which would obviously make them more reasonable. 

Film Analysis One

Michael Mercadante

English 199–001

Film Analysis One

22 September 2011

Men In Black (1997): What it Really Means

            The science fiction film, Men In Black written by Barry Sonnenfeld in 1997, has a lot more meaning to it than people notice when they watch it.  Yes there are aliens, guns, and spaceships in the film, but it goes deeper than this and it can be connected to our society today.  To start off what does science fiction actually mean?  I never did know just what “science fiction” meant (Sobchack 18).  There really is no definition everyone has their own opinions.  Many people today have different stories that go from being abducted by aliens to seeing a UFO in the sky and all of this gives people ideas of science fiction stories.  There was supposedly an alien space ship that crashed in Mexico in the year 1971 and this is probably the most known government conspiracy.  All of this leads people to think, where do they hide it all?  Area 51 is thought to be the place where everything gets covered up by the government.  No one has found this top secret government base, but many people still believe that it exists.  A possibility is that if aliens do exist, maybe they could help humans create a utopia.  They could also cause much more chaos than there already is.  There is also something ironic about this movie, the setting is in New York City and this is where the MIB fight the undercover aliens.  This is not much different than how we are trying to stop terrorism in today’s world.  The attack on 9/11 in New York City is a huge part of history in the world today and it will never be forgotten.                     
            Before this gets into detail, MIB the movie came from a comic book called “Men in Black” written by Lowell Cunningham.  History is a large part of our life, but the present is even more important.  When I look up in the sky at night and see the stars many things go through my mind.  I think to myself, it is impossible that we are alone, there has to be other life out there.  MIB really brought this thought to life and made the possibility of other life become even more fact than fiction to me.  There are billions of solar systems in each galaxy and there are billions of galaxies in the universe.  The numbers are so large that it is impossible to grasp.  As of right now we do not have technology to reach far enough out in space to discover other life.  If we do ever come in contact with anything it will most likely be them coming to us.  This means that they will be much more advanced.  Hopefully that whatever it is that comes will bring peace to our planet earth.  In MIB there were aliens that were peaceful and aliens that were the opposite.  It gives the viewer a little taste of what the outcome could be if aliens did exist and if they were good or bad.  As of right now everyone in the world is basically separated by their country, race, sexuality, opinion, etc.  If aliens were to come then I think everyone would have to unite as one and forget about all of their petty little differences and work together if the outcome was bad.  In the movie it is a different situation, the MIB take care of the alien threat and no one on earth besides them knows what is going on.  This shows how oblivious the human race is to everything that is going on around them and how the government can easily hide important information from the general population.                     
            Our species is very complex, but one thing in particular that is very clear is how we do not always think or care enough about what is happening in the real world.  It is like we just plug ourselves in and block everything else out and live in our own little fantasies.  This, in my opinion is how dystopia is formed and the world becomes chaotic.  In the face of a hostile world, retreat, escape, or simply a compensatory fantasy to cheer yourself up may be reasonable and humanly valuable responses (Baccolini and Moylan 14). What this quote says is that once we are in a dystopian world we do not want to realize what is really happening.  In other words people seem to block out the bad stuff and just try to think happy thoughts to get away from it all.  If people stick to this method then nothing will ever get fixed and the world will just stay as it is.  In MIB the men who know about the aliens being on earth work together with them to try and fight off the extra-terrestrials who do not have good intensions.  If no one ever questioned the possibility of aliens existing then the MIB movie would not exist.  It is good that the film maker produced a movie like this; I know it sounds far-fetched, but who knows it could actually be happening right now.  It puts the idea in everyone’s mind and gives them something to think about.  If E.T. arrives here one day since they are going to be more advanced, maybe they could help the human race fix all of the issues that we have in present day.  For example our pollution on mother earth is probably the biggest issue to this day and will not move from a top priority because our lives depend on how we treat our home.  We are yet to figure out a way to not use diesel fuel or any type of toxic gas to run our machines, at least in a global wide situation.  There are a select few companies and citizens who have gone green, but not many.  Maybe there is life out there that has the solution to this problem which would lead to our atmosphere being stronger.  A stronger atmosphere adds up to to a huge decrease in global warming.  A disadvantage that could arise from aliens coming to our planet is if they come to take our resources.  In MIB one specimen comes for one purpose and one purpose only, to get O’ Ryan’s belt and he kills anything that gets in his way.  This shows on a smaller scale how it could be if aliens did not care about the human race, but came for our planet.  There are many other advantages and disadvantages that could arise from coming in contact with another species and MIB does a good job of showing this.     
            The director chose and ironic spot to shoot this film, he chose NYC.  The irony comes from 9/11 of 2001 because of what happened when the twin towers came crashing down from the terrorist attacks.  post-9/11 that we all have become accustomed to hearing, yet we still grapple with understanding its implications for our lives and our society (Snyder 294). In MIB, NYC is where all of the action happens. The aliens are disguised as humans which can be related to today’s terrorism.  Nobody knows when or where terrorists will attack, it is all done by surprise.  This is the hardest part of the war we are fighting in right now.  We are not standing in lines shooting at each other like the British use to do, the threat is unknown and they use all kinds of different weapons.  Some examples are RPG’s, mines, and road side bombs that can be activated by someone hitting a button on a cell phone.  Our soldiers can never let their guard down because they have no idea who they can and cannot trust when in hostile territory. All it takes is one wrong decision that could cost the lives of many young men.  In the science fiction movie, Agent K and Will Smith make decisions that impact other people’s lives in very drastic ways all the time to contain the alien threat.  Maybe not all of the characters have the consequences of death, but some of them do if they fail their mission.  Just like our soldiers over in Iraq and Afghanistan, if for whatever reason we never made the decision to put our foot in the Afghani’s door then the random acts of terror would be greater in the United States.  Our country would be in a much worse position with not just the economy but also with issues of innocent people dying more often than they already are.                                      
            In general, this idea that the writer came up with makes a huge impact on how people view the situation of aliens and the possibility of them actually existing.  For me it kind of gave me the chills, but at the same time brought excitement.  If there really was an underground layer where everything was hidden, also known as Area 51 it would be a spectacular place where numerous opportunities would arise.  If there are people in an actual hidden base right now, I’m sure they are doing their best with trying to improvise new ways of doing things for planet earth.  Something needs to be done about pollution as soon as possible before global warming becomes even worse than it already is.  It would also be ideal if somehow the world could stop fighting and realize how much worse everything could be if for example an alien attack were to happen and they just came in to try and wipe us out.  But for Utopia to be transformative, it must also disrupt the structural closure of the present (Baccolini and Moylan 16).  Hopefully one day peace can be brought to the planet and all of the secrets will be revealed.

Works Cited

Baccolini, Raffaella, and Tom Moylan. “Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination.” New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Bragg, Rick. "Men in Black Come From His Galaxy - New York Times." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. Web. 21 Sept. 2011.    

Snyder, Mary H. “Analyzing Literature to Film Adaptations: a Novelist's Exploration and Guide.” New York: Continuum, 2011. Print.

Sobchack, Vivian Carol., and Vivian Carol. Sobchack. “Screening Space: the American Science Fiction Film.” New York: Ungar, 1987. Print.