Browsing by Author "Steenkamp, Lize-Maree"

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    Screening the posthuman : disembodied masculinity in virtual reality films
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-03) Steenkamp, Lize-Maree; De Villiers, Dawid; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of English.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In science fiction films, cyborgs are often represented as embodiments of a transhuman drive to escape the limitations of the human body. This technologically mediated evolution is a continuation in the extreme of humanist principles such as linear progress, reason, autonomy and the primacy of mind over body. Donna Haraway has registered the possibility that, as a hybrid, the figure of the cyborg could be utilized to revise humanist principles, rather than reiterate them, through posthumanist representation. However, this seems counter-intuitive, as cyborgs in popular culture are known to exaggerate dualist gender ideals rather than subvert them. What is more, the disembodied cyborg that is constituted by human interaction with virtual reality seemingly maintains the mind/body binary rather than challenging it. Through the study of three virtual reality films that construct different kinds of interaction between human and machine, Brainstorm (1983), eXistenZ (1999) and Her (2013), I contend that the representation of the disembodied cyborg collapses the mind/body binary primarily through representations of sex and death, but that the subsequent invocation of associated gender identities reinstates the masculine/feminine binary. I accomplish this through a method of formal analysis of the cinematic representation of the disembodied cyborg and the spaces it moves in. Filmic virtual reality in Brainstorm and Her resonates with posthumanist concerns, and is discussed in relation to existing poststructuralist paradigms of signification in the works of primarily Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida and N. Katherine Hayles. The formally alienating effects of Brainstorm are also integrated into a larger framework of film convention. With reference to Donna Haraway, Cary Wolfe and Neil Badmington, I discuss the disembodied cyborg as a posthuman figure in terms of its potential to collapse binaries, specifically those of mind/body and masculine/feminine. In order to appreciate the always-virtual nature of gender, the work of Judith Butler is utilized to explore the ways in which eXistenZ displays the fluidity of gender performances in virtual reality. I further argue that the three films accomplish the collapse of the mind/body dualism through the representation of sex and death, and reinstate binarist conceptions of gender performances. In Brainstorm and Her, desire and eroticism are coded as male undertakings that respond to the passive and objectified female form, whereas in eXistenZ, the representation of sexuality is more progressive. Violence, pain and death are also represented as the business of men in Brainstorm, while it is represented more playfully in eXistenZ. I aim to reveal the ways in which the emphasis on ultimate embodiment in virtual reality films through sex and death reinstates a sex-gender correlation, and thus, for the most part, do not succeed in the collapse of the gender dualism.