sylvia pimentalThrowing The Alien Into Relief in science fiction films Pt1
December 31st 2006 01:43
Adam Roberts defines one of the important aspects of science fiction as the ability ‘to throw the alien into relief against a backdrop of familiarity, and therefore make the Otherness all the more striking, all the more powerful.’ (p44).
Both Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956) and The Matrix (1999) are very much products of and reflections of their particular times but within the context of both texts a backdrop that is familiar and recognisable is used, in part to ‘throw the alien into relief’ (Roberts 2000: 44), but also, disorientingly to make the familiar alien. Because this backdrop is so familiar, so implicitly acceptable it makes the otherness all the more visible and disturbing. In both texts a familiar concept (identity and reality) is made alien – other. Although the foregrounding of the estrangement of something previously conceived as familiar, knowable, may be even more important and disturbing than the use of a backdrop of familiarity
The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers examines concepts of identity/inner space. In it identity functions as the nova or new thing, rather than the cause of the identity change as one might expect. Similarly one of the key nova in The Matrix is reality or the perception of reality. ‘In each case it is not so much the ingenuity of the novum, or the strangeness of it, that is important; it is the symbolic purchase its point of difference provides on the world we live in.’ (Roberts 2000: 19) It seems to be the case of both of these films that estrangement of and through the familiar gives them their particular impact. Although the use of recognisable settings - small town 1950s America and a postmodern metropolis in the late 1990s - also plays an important role in the process of throwing ‘the alien into relief.’
It is interesting to note that use of the familiar extends to both the background and the foreground in both films, and the dual use of familiarity (possibility) makes the scenarios all the more convincing. ‘…nova are grounded in a discourse of possibility, which is usually science or technology, and which renders the difference a material rather than just a conceptual or imaginative one.’ (Roberts 2000: 154)
The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers uses the familiar setting to reflect upon the individual self as a site of colonisation, something that can be quite literally lost. While in The Matrix there is a postmodernist questioning of both the nature of reality and just what is real, as well as a reflection on the construction of the self. The self like reality can be constructed or simulated. The line between self and other, real and unreal is dangerously thin, and blurred at that.
Both Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956) and The Matrix (1999) are very much products of and reflections of their particular times but within the context of both texts a backdrop that is familiar and recognisable is used, in part to ‘throw the alien into relief’ (Roberts 2000: 44), but also, disorientingly to make the familiar alien. Because this backdrop is so familiar, so implicitly acceptable it makes the otherness all the more visible and disturbing. In both texts a familiar concept (identity and reality) is made alien – other. Although the foregrounding of the estrangement of something previously conceived as familiar, knowable, may be even more important and disturbing than the use of a backdrop of familiarity
The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers uses the familiar setting to reflect upon the individual self as a site of colonisation, something that can be quite literally lost. While in The Matrix there is a postmodernist questioning of both the nature of reality and just what is real, as well as a reflection on the construction of the self. The self like reality can be constructed or simulated. The line between self and other, real and unreal is dangerously thin, and blurred at that.
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