Corpo, cinema e juventude: Prelúdios do homem pós-orgânico

Abstract

The body is an invention of the human culture, a complex group of representations and symbols. Different kinds of knowledge affect it as well as society s current powers and the historic time to which it belongs. The 21st century witnesses the rising of the cyberculture, the techno scientific development, especially computing, telecommunications and biotechnologies, and the imposition of their most important irradiations over the body, i.e. expectations and promises, values and judgment, products and trends. One look around and we see that the body is the target of postmodern bioasceticism, such as anabolic steroids and psychotropic drugs; bionic prosthesis, plastic surgery, organ transplant; nomophobia, nanotechnologies, wearable computers, subcutaneous chips; genetically modified beings; clones and avatars; biohackers. Subjectivity was not only placed on the body, but it also suffered the effects derived from the proximity to the ontological category that is in most evidence when the world is overstimulated by the cybernetics culture: the machines. The everyday presence of these creatures alters the way human beings think, feel and act because it awakens the desires to annihilate the biogenetical coercion, to achive functional improvements of the body, to keep the constant aesthetic betterment, and even, immortality. This dissertation makes connections with these recent phenomena, investing in analyzing the processes that originated them. It also tries to understand them currently in their manifestations, agenda and performances. The theoretical reference of this work is based on Richard Rorty s thinking, especially on the idea that human culture is formed through an incarnate megavocabulary that imposes on the world, the society and the human being descriptive, interpretative forms and by doing so, it shapes them, creates them. There are two central themes in this study, youth and cinema. Through the analysis of the feature film Avatar (2009), we find strong evidence of the symbiotic relationship between youngsters and machines. After all, in an intertwined world fundamentally conceived as a web, the digital generation needs to keep exponentially logged into a kind of interaction that is only possible through the hybridizing of the body with the machine. As regards science fiction movies, two iconographic character-cyborgs were critically analyzed, RoboCop (1987 and 2014), and Terminator (1984 and 2009). This was done so we could verify the changes depicted in the techno organic bodies presented by the seventh art. We observe that, on sci-fi genre, purist, techno-phobic vocabulary predominated towards the end of the 20th century, whereas at the beginning of the 21st century, we can identify a conciliatory approach that benefits both. Machine receives an humanity condition , as well as human-beings receive a machine-like condition. The final description binds us together. It is the rising of technophile and post-organic condition.