Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements and Thanks
- Preface
- List of Illustrations
- 1 Introduction: The Formation of the Genre
- 2 Science Fiction Films in the 1950s
- 3 Spaced Out: Between the ‘Golden Years’
- 4 The Masculine Subject of Science Fiction in the 1980s Blockbuster Era
- 5 Gender Blending and the Feminine Subject in Science Fiction Film
- 6 Alien Others: Race and the Science Fiction Film
- 7 Generic Performance and Science Fiction Cinema
- 8 Conclusion: The Technology of Science Fiction Cinema
- Bibliography
- Film Cited
- Index
8 - Conclusion: The Technology of Science Fiction Cinema
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements and Thanks
- Preface
- List of Illustrations
- 1 Introduction: The Formation of the Genre
- 2 Science Fiction Films in the 1950s
- 3 Spaced Out: Between the ‘Golden Years’
- 4 The Masculine Subject of Science Fiction in the 1980s Blockbuster Era
- 5 Gender Blending and the Feminine Subject in Science Fiction Film
- 6 Alien Others: Race and the Science Fiction Film
- 7 Generic Performance and Science Fiction Cinema
- 8 Conclusion: The Technology of Science Fiction Cinema
- Bibliography
- Film Cited
- Index
Summary
Since the inception of the science fiction film, the genre has been built upon a thematic interest in the social and philosophical delights and dangers associated with industrial, communications and biological technologies. This is a characteristic that it shares with the written genre and, to an extent, with the science fiction comic book, graphic novel and television series. However, science fiction films are also known for their devotion to technological display and for the presentation of phenomenal spectacle. These are characteristics of the film genre that can be traced back to the beginnings of cinema. As outlined in the introduction, early forerunners of the science fiction film genre often featured the new technologies of the industrial age at the same time as they showcased the illusions made possible by the advent of the cinematic apparatus. Although George Méliès' La Voyage dans la Lune (1902) is probably the most famous proto-science fiction film, on a structural level many ‘trick films’ displayed a two-fold convention of presenting new and fantastic technologies within a formal composition that fore grounded cinematic intervention and invention. While audience members in 1895 may well have run away from the screen in fear and panic upon viewing Auguste and Louis Lumière's short ‘actualité’ of a train approaching the camera in L'Arrivée d'un train à la Ciotat, viewers quickly learned to distinguish the experience of seeing a film from the reality of modern life.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Science Fiction CinemaBetween Fantasy and Reality, pp. 247 - 281Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2007