New Poetics of the Film Body: Docility, Molecular Fundamentalism and Twenty First Century Destiny

• Authors: Susan Flynn
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Twenty first century film evokes a new topology of the body. Science and technology are the new century’s ‘sovereign power’ which enforces biopolitics through bodies which, by virtue of being seen at their most fundamental level, have become docile surfaces. The film body is at once manipulated and coerced into an ethos of optimization; a thoroughly scientific and ‘molecular’ optimization which proffers ‘normalization’ and intimately regulated bodies. In the film bodies of this millennium, bodily intervention results in surveillance becoming internalized. Now the body is both a means and an end of social control. This essay applies the philosophies Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose to twenty first century Hollywood film, elucidating a new tropos, a new film body/body of film.

Keywords

EN

Hollywood; Michel Foucault; Nikolas Rose; science fiction; body theory; molecular science; biotechnology; disability

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: American, British and Canadian Studies Journal
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 5-23

Dates

published

2015-06-01

online

2015-08-21

Contributors

author

Susan Flynn

• University of the Arts, London

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/abcsj-2015-0001