Looking at the present from the future: the pedagogy of science-fiction films

Abstract

From a postmodern and poststructuralist-inspired cultural studies perspective, we have sought to show how science-fiction films have worked upon the shape of a highly technological future world, and subjects to live in it. We have drawn on representations aggravating and deriding ways of living and issues in contemporary societies. Like other cultural pedagogies, cinema acts on the production and govern of individuals in an information and communication-based world, causing displacements in their subjectivities. To encourage this discussion we have addressed six sci-fi films whose analyses focused on the disturbing similarity between human beings and machines represented as cyborgs, posthumans and post-organic beings. We have also addressed the spread of technological and human garbage in ‘future’ societies, and the replacement of very subtle ways of control for modern discipline.