Isaac Weingram
Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, �Technophobia
In the essay Technophobia, Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner argue that science fiction films often portray technological progress in a negative light in order to reaffirm socially conservative values. According to Ryan and Douglas, these values are reinforced through the juxtaposition sci-fi films present of nature and artifice. Through this dichotomy these films tend to elevate what is perceived to be natural, while subordinating what is perceived to be artificial.
Ryan and Kellner suggest that science fiction films traditionally relate nature with the ideals of individualism, freedom, feeling, and spontaneity in contrast with the collectivism, equality, reason, and mechanization of technology. Rather than being a positive force of progress, technology threatens the very fabric of society in the sci-fi flickreplacing the values of the status quo with radical ideologies. In this case, the sci-fi film merely serves to entrench the widely accepted dogma by illustrating the harms of change to the audience.
Ryan and Kellner see THX 1138 and Logans Run as paradigmatic of this reaffirmation of conservative values. In these films, the audience encounters dystopic futures, in which technology has created totalitarian systems that subjugate the individual. However, the protagonists in these films manage to overcome the oppression of technology by escaping from the artificial constructs of technology to a state of nature. Through the reclamation of the state of nature, we, the audience, come to recognize the superiority of the prevailing values in our society. This at least, is the intention, which Ryan and Kellner observe at work in traditional sci-fi films.
Ryan and Kellner go even further, though, to argue that in this system the cards are stacked against technology. These films project black and white images of value systems; there are no gray areas. Thus, by presenting the audience with a view of technological society, which can only be perceived as evil, and juxtaposing it with nature, the audience cannot help but conclude that the natural state of affairs is superior. Moreover, in these films nature is merely defined as that which is not technological, so nature is purely a construct that can only lead to the audience to the conclusion that the conservative value system is to be preferred.
The alternative to this style of sci-fi flick is represented by Blade Runner, according to Ryan and Kellner. They argue that Blade Runner presents a more nuanced approached to technologyone which sees shades of gray. Instead of technology, being portrayed as strictly evil, technology and humanity are both shown to be complex and dynamic entities. The film even ends with an alliance of human and machine with the flight of Deckard, a human, and Rachel, an android. Ryan and Kellner believe this union of man and machine suggests that there can exist a synthesis between technology and nature, which reconstitutes the values of society in a way that is progressive, rather than destructive.
Where do we see Godards Alphaville with respect to these two paradigms for science fiction films? Is it merely a technophobic film, which seeks to reaffirm some of societies values? Or does it treat technology in the same style as Blade Runner?
What do we see as the values being expressed in Godards Alphaville? And how are these values portrayed in the science fiction aspects of the film?
Is it possible for Godards film to be technophobic, while still rejecting the socially conservative values of the time, i.e. can we have a film that portrays the values of technological progress as problematic, while at the same time rejecting the status quo?
Why do we have a dystopic view of the future in Alphaville, if in the end Godard is critiquing the prevailing social values and not seeking to preserve them?