The bad movies make it too easy: the hero appears as totally good, offers no doubts about it, and the villain is completely evil. There is no ambiguity, nothing to think about.
However, good films raise questions that are not easy to solve and invite reflection. Since philosophy prefers problems to final solutions, good cinema and thought are magnificent travel companions.
Fasten seat belts. In this brief journey we are going to propose four great films. With them we will think a problem that crosses the story: the relationship between the animal, the human and technology.
The birth of technology in 2001: an odyssey in space
In one of the best known scenes of this science fiction film, a primate violates the skull of another animal violently with one bone. The previous appearance of a monolith is key to understanding its attitude. Before their arrival, the monkeys lived in harmony; Then the fights begin.
The monolith can be interpreted as the emergence of technology and when placing it in that historical moment, the film shows that the manufacture of a prehistoric utensil meant the first technological fact.
Many thinkers, such as Marx, have affirmed that it was precisely the progressive use of tools, which caused human beings to separate from animals. This made us more capable, allowed us to adapt better, prevent difficulties. But it also behaved a burden, and derived dangers – envidia, prohibitions, punishments … – that can generate violence and obligations that undermine our freedom.
The plow, for example, facilitates agricultural work and improves production. In turn, it allows the accumulation of food before possible contingencies (bad harvests, epidemics or others). But it also requires maintenance, surveillance and control work, as well as a certain regulation in this regard.
That is, ultimately, without the existence of the plow, there would not have been a willingness to enter with stealth in a silo to steal food or the need to establish, therefore, a punishment.
Eliminate ties in The witch
The process of liberation of all those specifically human charges we were talking about is reflected in this disturbing film, Robert Eggers’ spring opera.
In her, the protagonist, Thomasin, emancipates her homeland when she travels from England to New England. Subsequently, it is disconnected from the community that is part of when your father is excommunicated and her family is isolated near a forest. Later, he moves away from his own environment after being accused of witchcraft.
Finally, his release culminates in the forest. The last scene is very significant about it: Thomasin’s figure rises on a dance of naked women dancing around a bonfire.
Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy is clearly located on Thomasin’s side.
Deleuze encourages to eliminate all bonds that reduce our abilities and fully perform them, provided they do not generate obstacles to others. Its understanding of the animal, rather than the return to a state of a non -technological nature, implies the rejection of any norm that limits us, placing muckers and corsets. Thomasin becomes animalwhich does not mean that it ceases to be human.
Flee from the slavery of technology with Matrix
In the saga of the films of Matrix The fight between rebels is told, led by Neo, Trinity and Morpheus, and the agents of power, with Mr. Smith to the head.
The first film updates the myth of Plato’s cave, adapting it to the technological era. In the cave described by Plato, slaves are inside, chained. However, they are not aware of their servitude state. They visualize the shadows of some objects projected on the wall and believe that these images are the real and true objects. Exit outside, unleashed, it means seeing the world in all its amplitude, knowing the truth.
In Matrixthe world is actually a computer simulation. But how to escape that other cave?
In one of the most iconic moments of the film, Morpheus presents the possibility of choosing between two options: the red pill or the blue pill. The first offers the truth, assume that he is a slave and that he must fight for liberation; The other returns to the redile of ignorant happiness.
The protagonist, Neo, accepts the challenge and opts for the red pill. In this time of relentless technological progress, post -truths, with so much information that it is almost impossible to know the truth and in which the fake newsit seems increasingly complicated to get out of the cave.
However, it is possible, as the last film on our list shows.
The ‘supermujer’ Poor creatures
And Matrix Updates Plato’s myth, this feature film does the same with that of Prometheus and the Frankenstein de Mary Shelley.
Thanks to technology, scientist Dr. Godwin brings Bella Baxter to the world, a baby in the body of an adult woman. The education he receives is very little traditional: there are hardly any prohibitions and he is invited to learn, taking into account that he always faces the world as a girl, playing and having fun.
In the words of Nietzsche, it becomes superman; In this case, in Supermujer. In Thus Zarathustra spoke The philosopher explains that, unlike the camel – which blindly obeys every order – or the lion – which, with a bars, rejects them all -, the child plays and creates. This allegory does not refer to the first era of our lives but rather to a way of living: the way of being a child (superman) refuses to become both master and slave. As does, throughout history, Bella.
In short, nature and culture or animal, human and technological are closely related areas. The CIBORG concept, proposed by the philosopher Donna Haraway, eliminates the labels that separate and exclude and advocate by combining the different dimensions of reality that configure us and provide us with such a wonderful potential (for example, the printing press) as dangerous (the atomic bomb).
After all, we are technological human animals and we have to assume that responsibility.
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