Transgression and Discrimination: Artificial Women in Science-Fiction Cinema
Ewa Fiuk
ewa.fiuk@tlen.plInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9908-8510
Abstract
The article discusses the problem of sexualization of female characters in science-fiction films. The author refers to genre theory, feminist and psychoanalytic film theory, as well as research results in social psychology and neuroscience, trying to elucidate the possible causes and consequences of an overtly discriminating way of depicting women and femininity that is very common in Western culture. With this aim in mind, she characterises selected individual films (e.g. Metropolis by Fritz Lang, Blade Runner by Ridley Scott and Under the Skin by Jonathan Glazer), as well as proposing an analysis of recurring cultural narratives and specific motifs symptomatic of cinema. The author also refers to some works of science-fiction literature, indicating a big reproductive potential lying in the perspective presented, in which two apparently different phenomena – transgression and discrimination – converge.
Keywords:
posthumanism, science fiction, gynoid, woman, sexualizationReferences
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Authors
Ewa Fiukewa.fiuk@tlen.pl
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9908-8510
Film scholar, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw); film publicist and contributor to many magazines, periodicals and books; translator and interpreter working in Polish and German; editor of Kwartalnik Filmowy. Author of the books Inicjacje, tożsamość, pamięć. Kino niemieckie na przełomie wieków [Initiations, Identity, Memory: German Cinema at the Turn of Centuries] (2012) and Obrazo-światy, dźwięko-przestrzenie. Kino Toma Tykwera [Worlds of Images, Dimensions of Sounds: Cinematic Work of Tom Tykwer] (2016).
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