<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Twenty first century film evokes a new topology of the body. Science and technology are the new century’s ‘sovereign power’ which enforces biopolitics through bodies which, by virtue of being seen at their most fundamental level, have become docile surfaces. The film body is at once manipulated and coerced into an ethos of optimization; a thoroughly scientific and ‘molecular’ optimization which proffers ‘normalization’ and intimately regulated bodies. In the film bodies of this millennium, bodily intervention results in surveillance becoming internalized. Now the body is both a means and an end of social control. This essay applies the philosophies Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose to twenty first century Hollywood film, elucidating a new tropos, a new film body/body of film.</p></abstract>

Twenty first century film evokes a new topology of the body. Science and technology are the new century’s ‘sovereign power’ which enforces biopolitics through bodies which, by virtue of being seen at their most fundamental level, have become docile surfaces. The film body is at once manipulated and coerced into an ethos of optimization; a thoroughly scientific and ‘molecular’ optimization which proffers ‘normalization’ and intimately regulated bodies. In the film bodies of this millennium, bodily intervention results in surveillance becoming internalized. Now the body is both a means and an end of social control. This essay applies the philosophies Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose to twenty first century Hollywood film, elucidating a new tropos, a new film body/body of film.

New Poetics of the Film Body: Docility, Molecular Fundamentalism and Twenty First Century Destiny

American, British and Canadian Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Twenty first century film evokes a new topology of the body. Science and technology are the new century’s ‘sovereign power’ which enforces biopolitics through...

New Poetics of the Film Body: Docility, Molecular Fundamentalism and Twenty First Century Destiny

Published Online: Aug 21, 2015

Page range: 5 - 23

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/abcsj-2015-0001

Keywords
Hollywood, Michel Foucault, Nikolas Rose, science fiction, body theory, molecular science, biotechnology, disability

© ABC Studies, Journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

New Poetics of the Film Body: Docility, Molecular Fundamentalism and Twenty First Century Destiny

Published Online: Aug 21, 2015

Page range: 5 - 23

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/abcsj-2015-0001

KeywordsHollywood, Michel Foucault, Nikolas Rose, science fiction, body theory, molecular science, biotechnology, disability

© ABC Studies, Journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Hollywood, Michel Foucault, Nikolas Rose, science fiction, body theory, molecular science, biotechnology, disability