Technology has already invaded the human body, and it appears that technology has completely transformed the way people perceive themselves. In today’s cinema, there is a broad range of representations of technology and its relationship with the human body. This course will explore the critical issues of body and technology surrounding films.

The first part of this course will examine how technological transformations offer new options and let the digital become an extension of the human body in films. The course will consider the role of the body in a variety of films from the early 1930s to the present, to see technological products become parts of the human body at both the physical and mental level.

The second part of the course will investigate how contemporary science fiction cinema redraws boundaries between human and non-human flesh, natural and artificial intelligence, living and non-living matter. The films in this category are more than technophobia or technophilia Hollywood-like gadgets, but full of symbols and allegories and giving a more critical perspective on technology and body. The teaching and learning will attend to how certain films situate the characters in discourses of culture, race, gender, sex, and class via technology.

Finally, the course will address the specific conditions that technologies impose on performance. Students who are to be twenty-first century global screen actors shall understand that technological transformations offer not only new obstacles but new opportunities for expression.