Q&A Final Presentation

My Argument

Technology can provide the body with many pleasures and be a convenience in everyday life.  Technology can also be a key part of enhancing the capabilities of the body.  Technology is not however immune to human error and has the potential to be dangerous if misused, abused, taken to a point beyond moderation, or misunderstood.

Prompt 12

I believe that violence is used in movies just like any other topic that fascinates viewers.  Most movies contain the same elements.  These elements are bad language, sex, and violence.  Just about every rated R video contains all three of these.  People watch movies because things like sex and violence are fascinating.  Average people don't get to experience raw violence on a day to day basis.  When people are involved in or get to witness a fight or murder or something they experience a feeling that is unmatched by other emotions.  On the same theme, people don't get to casually watch other people have sex on a day to day basis.  Movies allow viewers to watch these two things easily and experience something they don't usually have access to.

As uncommon as viewing sex or violence on a day to day basis is, viewing the two simultaneously is even more uncommon.  Mixing the two seems to hold a level of intrigue that nothing else can touch.  This isn't a common theme of movies.  When a movie contains these two it must do so in a way that consists of studying these actions.  In other words it's not acceptable for a movie to just show violence and sex without viewing it from a distance.  A movie must contain another movie within it to show these types of things.  It's not socially acceptable to really do so in any other manner.  

I believe it's this aspect of being socially unacceptable that makes Croenberg use it as a portal for videodrome penetration.  The concept of a video being able to take over someone's mind is very strange.  It's only appropriate for an equally bizarre event like sex and violence to be the essential event for this phenomenon to occur.  I don't think this idea complicates the argument of the body and technology at all.  I believe it just brings more logic to the crazy idea of technology having such an influence on the body by giving a reason why.  Since we can't really fathom some of the ideas of technology and its powers because they sound illogical, it's easy for movies to support this concept with an answer they we equally don't understand.

Prompt 11

The Lawnmower Man explores the relationship between the body and technology in many different ways by using many different characters.  The main characters in this movie are a scientist and a gardener.  The scientist has just recently suffered a blow to his business career because of the death of a chimp that he is experimenting on.  The scientist decides to try his experiments on a gardener who is not very smart.  The scientist hopes to make the gardener more intelligent with these experiments.  Throughout the movie the scientist's personal life begins to deteriorate because of his obsession with his job and technology advances.  The scientist uses technology in a way that he hopes will enhance the mind of the gardener.  This presents a completely different argument than the gardener does.

The gardener undergoes these experiments by the scientist and becomes smarter and smarter.  By the end of the movie the gardener is extremely talented and is capable of things like mind-reading and telekinesis.  Once the gardener becomes intelligent and capable of powerful things he also becomes increasingly angry due to effects of the experiments.  The experiments conducted rely heavily on virtual reality.  The gardener and the scientist both use this virtual reality world to escape the real world.  The scientist does it for fun and exploration and searches it for ways to seek benefits for the human mind.  The gardener becomes more and more into the virtual reality world and feels he is limited by the physical world.  He begins conducting experiments on himself so that he may make the total transformation into the virtual reality world and leave his humanly body behind.  This contrasts the scientist tremendously.  The scientist wishes to use the virtual reality as a means of helping the body and the gardener sees it as a means of leaving the body and its limits behind.  

The gardener becomes too powerful and angry towards the end of the movie and begins killing people.  This breakdown and the overall deterioration of the people's lives involved with this technology gives an overall argument about how harmful technology can be to humans too concerned with it.

Prompt 10

There were many topics within Neuromancer that I found interesting. By interesting I mean confusing of course. The one I found most interesting was probably death. Death is viewed in Neuromancer much differently than it is in anything I've ever seen, read, or heard.

Dixie Flatline is the most obvious example of death in the novel. Dixie is a ROM is some kind of disc with a recording on it. Once someone jacks into this recording, Dixie is present as a dead person or some sort of ghost. Dixie was a human at one time who was recorded onto this ROM and now is stuck in there. When the ROM is not being used Dixie does not exist. Dixie has characteristics like his laugh that are disturbing to humans. This adds an extra scary factor to death itself. Dixie is dead but has desires which I find strange. Dixie longs for nothing more than to be erased so he doesn't have to exist in this state anymore. I'm confused by this because if he is erased I wonder if he goes into a different state of death or just doesn't exist as a dead person anymore. If he's dead but wants to be erased to a different state of dead does the next or other stage of dead present better circumstances?

I find the story of when Case dies to be much more interesting however. Case dies and goes to a sight on the beach that involves Linda Lee and Neuromancer. Linda Lee seems to be content and happy in this weird state of death. She doesn't seem to be bothered by it like Case is. In all the relations to death the state of cold is present. This seems to bother Case the most. The ever present cold bothers him. Linda Lee is content in the place but Case wishes to leave it. This makes me wonder if the state of death creates a different mindset for everyone. The other things about death that bother Case are that he is on a beach with wind and dirt. I find this interesting because these are things that a lot of people enjoy. In this futuristic world of technology these are cast as bad things. I would be in a happy state if I were on a secluded beach with my lady friend and no school or work to worry about. I'm just saying.