Science Fiction, Film and Literature

Presentación

The Science Fiction Literature and Film course explores key cultural themes and issues, past and present (and future), through the analysis of popular works of science fiction.  In the same vein, the course also explores key philosophical questions related to what it means to be human in a postmodern context of rapid, and often disorienting, technological and cultural change.  The course explores some of the existing approaches to the analysis of key popular cultural texts of science fiction, and encourages students to reflect on how social, cultural, and technological processes have affected their own lives and livelihoods.  The course also seeks to develop a critical perspective vis-à-vis the discourses about the not-so-distant future, especially as they pertain to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the ongoing proliferation of a technological understanding of being.    

• Clases 1 y 2: Introduction to Science Fiction Film and Literature (2 sesiones)

This unit provides students with an introduction to the course.  We look at some definitions of culture, as well as some basic philosophical concepts and themes, and briefly review and anticipate the films and literature included in the course.  We also outline a brief history of the science fiction genre.  Then, we review some of the basic approaches to the films and literary texts included in the course.

• Clase 3 : George Orwell and 1984 

In this unit, students discuss the film version of 1984 by Michael Radford, as well as George Orwell’s novel.  Some of the themes discussed in this unit include: dystopic futures, mechanisms of social and cultural control, disciplinary society, structural violence, doublethink, and collective memory.  Students also analyze ways in which the film version of 1984 expands (or limits) the scope of George Orwell's warning about a future authoritarian society.

• Clase 4: A Space Odyssey

In this unit, students discuss representations of extraterrestrial beings, particularly the aliens depicted in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), and James Cameron's The Abyss (1989), although other science fiction works will be discussed.  Students explore how aliens are utilized in film to incite not just fear and anxiety in audiences, but also hope and humanity in the face of societal breakdown and class struggle.  Aliens, and other similar beings (i.e. monsters), provoke and animate characters and institutions on screen, often revealing fundamental hypocrisies, injustices, and delusions inherent in (real) society.  Students discuss how these alien encounters (and their contexts) are meticulously constructed by the filmmakers (using groundbreaking technology and innovative design), and how these condition the emotional and psychological impact on the audience.  Some additional themes discussed in this unit include: the metaphorical Other, world construction, class conflict and struggle, corporate greed and corruption, the military-industrial complex, bioweapons, malevolent science, the impact of the Cold War, among others. 

• Clases 5 y  6 : Aliens (2 sesiones)

In this unit, students discuss representations of extraterrestrial beings, particularly the aliens depicted in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), and James Cameron's The Abyss (1989), although other science fiction works will be discussed.  Students explore how aliens are utilized in film to incite not just fear and anxiety in audiences, but also hope and humanity in the face of societal breakdown and class struggle.  Aliens, and other similar beings (i.e. monsters), provoke and animate characters and institutions on screen, often revealing fundamental hypocrisies, injustices, and delusions inherent in (real) society.  Students discuss how these alien encounters (and their contexts) are meticulously constructed by the filmmakers (using groundbreaking technology and innovative design), and how these condition the emotional and psychological impact on the audience.  Some additional themes discussed in this unit include: the metaphorical Other, world construction, class conflict and struggle, corporate greed and corruption, the military-industrial complex, bioweapons, malevolent science, the impact of the Cold War, among others. 

• Clases 7 y 8: Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (2 sesiones)

In this unit, students analyze Ridley Scott's futuristic noir Blade Runner, as well as Phillip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  In Scott's visually impressive depiction of a dystopian Los Angeles (of debris, decay, and abandonment), as well as in Dick's post-apocalyptic San Francisco (of post-nuclear Armageddon), postmodernity problematizes the "traditional" boundaries of the human (and the real) in the throws of a totalizing culture of mechanization and technology.  Other themes discussed in this unit include: control through social media (Mercer's empathy box), embodied AI, technocapitalism, identity construction and memory, the culture of spectacle, the commodification of dissent, image addiction, and consent through mass media.

• Clases 9 y 10: Time Travel and Precognition (2 sesiones)

In this unit, students compare the formal elements and devices used in James Cameron's The Terminator and Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys.  They also analyze Phillip K. Dick's The Minority Report, and the film version Minority Report (Steven Spielberg), focusing on the differences (via adaptation) between these two works.  Students explore the concepts of time, of time travel, as well as the paradoxes of time travel as articulated in the films, which entertain the notion of changing the future through time travel to the past.  In a similar vein, students also explore the possibility of precognition and its potential to affect the course of future events, as represented in Dick's Minority Report, as well as in Spielberg’s film adaptation, along with the ramifications of such notions in the real world (i.e. surveillance societies, the Bush Doctrine, etc.).  Some of the major themes discussed in this unit, include: artificial consciousness, artificial intelligence singularity, the erosion of civil liberties, commodity capitalism, pandemics, photographic or imaging technology, technological determinism, among others. 

Sobre el profesor

Anthony Rauld es antropólogo visual chileno-estadounidense de la Universidad de California, Berkeley, y de la Universidad de San Francisco State, profesor adjunto del Departamento de Lingüística de la Universidad de Chile, donde dicta clases sobre cultura, literatura e historia estadounidense, británica y chilena.  En la misma universidad, es coordinador del diplomado de extensión American Cultural Studies en la Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades.  Como creador audiovisual, Anthony Rauld ha realizado documentales históricos/antropológicos, incluyendo la producción País Invisible (colección Museo de la Memoria y Derechos Humanos), sobre el periodismo audiovisual durante la dictadura de Augusto Pinochet, la producción La Negra, retrato etnográfico de una comunidad en Alto Hospicio, y la producción Wixage Anai (colección Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, en colaboración con David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies), sobre un programa radial Mapuche en Santiago.     

Curso Science Fiction, Film and Literature

Prof. responsable: Anthony Rauld Cabero

Número de horas: 20

Dedicación semanal: 1 sesión/ 2 horas

Número de vacantes: 15

Modalidad: Remota/online (una clase presencial al mes)

Horario: miércoles | 18:00 -20:00 horas

El curso cuenta con certificado de la Universidad de Chile.

Requisito: nivel intermedio de inglés. 

* La modalidad del curso será virtual. Empiezan en abril(apenas se llene el cupo mínimo de inscritos, seis). Contemplan una reunión semanal en el horario que se indica, las sesiones son de dos horas con un pequeño recreo intermedio. El contenido más detallado de los programas podrá revisarse en el sitio web del Centro de Lenguas y Culturas del Mundo.