Applebaum's Kleptocracy, Inc.

I try not to talk about or even think about politics anymore, but now and then I run into something that needs to be repeated. This Trump thing is nothing but an elaborate con. Without any disclosure of his and his family's holdings and business transactions, including trades, we're flying blind. But I'm pretty sure that we're seeing market manipulation, insider trading, and a ton of other illegal shit. And he's in a hurry. Probably thinks he has until January 2027 to rake in as much as he can.

Anne Applebaum is all over the story in her Atlantic article Kleptocracy, Inc.

The Cyborg Revisited

This old piece from ten years or so ago might be interesting in light of speculation nowadays that large language models like ChatGPT are on the verge of becoming conscious in the human sense. Scientists are already beginning to talk about creating "meat-based computers" that incorporate living cells. I've been wondering how the film industry has kept up over the last decade, but the idea of ploughing through ten years of the output of Hollywood plus the streaming services is daunting. Maybe I'll turn the job over to ChatGPT. Give it the text below to chew over and add to. 

The Cyborg

Societies resolve conflicts between opposites like good and evil by reconciling them within the fabric of myths. For me, the struggle of humans against the not so human, which has been the subject of myth since Homer, comes closest to being resolved in the myth of the cyborg, a creation that is part human and part machine. The cyborg re-unites humans with characteristics we projected onto the world of machines and set ourselves in opposition to around the time of the Industrial Revolution. Machines are cold, dead and hard, but living human beings are warm and, compared to machines, very soft. The fragility of human beings is revealed in war, murders, car wrecks and plane crashes, the art of Schwarzkogler, Burden and Mark Pauline, the reproductions of Andy Warhol, and the films of motion picture directors whose forte is the action sequence, and, piling action sequence upon action sequence and genre upon genre, the Action Adventure Science Fiction Fantasy film.

The struggle of humans against machines, as it has played out in our best films, has two main variations. In the first variation, machines are evil. In the second variation, machines are just dangerous and it's the "mad scientists" who create or use them who are evil or insane. Machines have a potential for evil, but they usually include a built-in safety mechanism to protect people -- the first law of Robotics is not to harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm -- but, of course, the safety mechanism doesn't always work. Forbidden Planet (1956) is an especially bleak rendering of the mad scientist myth. After thousands of years of rationality, with the assistance of a machine to end all machines, the Krell are destroyed by monsters from the id. Morbius, in his pursuit of the knowledge and power of the Krell, is transformed into a monster who, subconsciously, seeks to destroy anyone who opposes him.  In masterful renditions of the myth like Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, both the evil machine and the mad scientist versions of the struggle between human and machine resonate at once. Dangerous men are caught up in dangerous machines. We can see the Strategic Air Command as a machine out of control, we can see it as a machine in the hands of a mad general, or we can see SAC as a cog in the menacing machine we used to call the Cold War, a concept that comes close to what the Hindus mean by karma. A clockwork.

Until the Eighties, most Science Fiction films, and in particular the ones in which the machine is a robot, cyborg, or some combination of human and machine, favored the evil machine story and reflected the ambivalence and caution toward machines that had informed the Science Fiction film since Fritz Lang created the evil robot, Maria (the original material girl) in Metropolis (1926).  These films include 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Colossus: The Forbin Project (1969),  Westworld (1973), The Demon Seed (1977), Alien (1979), and, finally, James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd's The Terminator (1984), the genre's last solid rendition of a truly evil machine. The machine in T1, like Skynet, the Artificial Intelligence that created it, is bad to its alloy bone.

The separation of humans from machines in popular culture began to close in the 1980’s. In Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), more physical damage is sustained by replicants than by people, the replicants have pitifully short life spans, and, in fact, all of the women in the film are replicants.  Scott's film stands Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, on its head. Dicks’ novel is about a bounty hunter who is so human he is capable of empathizing with the ruthless machines he hunts down and destroys. That capacity almost destroys him. Fourteen years later, in Blade Runner, the machines are more human and compassionate than the humans. It's the machines who recite poetry and philosophy and who have "seen things you people wouldn't believe," and it's pain that keeps Roy Baty alive long enough to redeem the bounty hunter, Rick Deckard.  In Robocop (1987) the human, torn down and reconstructed with machine parts replacing limbs and organs, sustains massive injuries in his first encounter with a killer robot. And, in Cameron and Hurd's Aliens (1986), their sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), the robot or "artificial person" is ripped in half by WATCH OUT! A XENOMORPH! Cameron and Hurd's word for a non-human life form. The humans and the machines are on the same side, and, at the film's climax, it is the badly damaged "artificial person" -- his legless torso resembling a broken, plastic doll -- who saves the human child from being sucked into space.

By the time Cameron and Hurd released the sequel to their first Terminator film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the chasm separating people and machines was gone. T2, like The Terminator, is set within the context of an apocalyptic war between humans and machines that follows a 1997 nuclear war between the United States and Russia. The nuclear war begins when Skynet, the U.S.A.'s computer-based defense system, achieves self-awareness and attacks the Russians, hoping the human race will be destroyed in the nuclear holocaust that follows. In this, both films are consistent with each other, and with Dr. Strangelove, Colossus: The Forbin Project and other films of the Cold War era.  And Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The Terminator have the same basic plot. Skynet sends a Terminator from the future to kill Sarah Connor or her son John before John can be born, grow up, and lead the humans in their war against the machines. In both films, the humans send a warrior back through time to protect John and his mother. It is at this point that T1 and T2 diverge. In The Terminator, the protector is a human being, and the Terminator is a machine. In T2, the protector is a machine, and the Terminator is neither human nor machine. He is something else.

T2 is a brilliant rendition of the mad scientist myth.  Three heroes, John Connor, his mom, and John's cyborg protector, hustle to stop the mad scientist before he can invent the basic technology that leads to Skynet. To stay alive, they have to stay out of the clutches of a new kind of Terminator who, though Cameron and Hurd call him a machine, is depicted, especially in his grotesque death throes, as essentially organic or worse. Unlike the Terminator in T1, who is a machine disguised as a man, the Terminator in T2 is an organic whole, not an assemblage of parts, and, although it's possible to read "machine" into his strength, agility and relentless focus, when he's consigned to a caldron of molten steel at the climax of the film, he shape shifts, writhes and bellows in agony like a monstrous animal or demon.

T2 is remarkably misanthropic and predictably iconoclastic in its assault on the usual people and institutions, including Ma Bell, bank machines, cops, bikers, foster parents and the city of Los Angeles, which is flattened by a hydrogen bomb. But T2’s rendition of the cyborg who is sent back through time to protect John Connor is heroic. And, just in case we can't follow the sub-text, T2 spells it out for us in a voice-over by Sarah Connor. Watching the cyborg and her kid, Sarah says: "Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. The Terminator would never stop. It would never leave him. And it would never hurt him, never shout at him, or get drunk and hit him, or say it was too busy to spend time with him. It would always be there. And it would die to protect him. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. In an insane world, it was the sanest choice."

In the film's Wagnerian finale, the cyborg sacrifices himself to save the human race by following his evil counterpart into the cauldron to make sure that the last remnant of the mad scientist's work, the computer chip inside the cyborg's own head, is destroyed. As the cyborg prepares to enter the flames, Cameron and Hurd use a series of close-ups to create a beautiful portrait of The Cyborg. Half of the face is human, the other half, where the skin has been torn away to reveal the gleaming metal armor underneath, is machine.



But there is more.  In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron and Gayle Anne Hurd gave us our first glimpse of a new, still unformed technology that might replace the machine as the not-us adversary upon which we project our worst fears. Having united human and machine through the myth of the cyborg, having accepted the machine model of human intelligence and anatomy to the extent that we understood ourselves better as machines than as animals, having realized that we are evolving, not into angels but into machines, we have joined with The Cyborg to face the uncertain, and, because our paranoia stays one step ahead of us, always dangerous natural and supernatural worlds. The myth of the evil machine is dead. We are ready to confront, in myth and in art, the potential of bioengineering and of our own over-heated subconscious minds.

Look! I Made A Chat! (Hat tip to Stephen Sondheim)

 

Here's the ChatGPT 4.5 session that updated The Cyborg. It took about 15 minutes. 

 You said:

I wrote the attached article 10 years ago. I've been thinking of updating it, but ploughing through tens years of Hollywood films plus the output of the streaming services seems daunting. Can you update the article for me to include the significant films since The Terminator and their meaning in terms of this article? Pick up where I left off.

ChatGPT said:

Here's how you might update your insightful article, "The Cyborg," to cover the last decade of significant films and streaming content since The Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). This proposed update maintains your analytical framework of exploring the relationship and evolving dynamic between humanity and machines.

---

Continuation of "The Cyborg" (2013–2023)

In the years since Terminator 2, Hollywood and streaming services have presented cyborgs, robots, and artificial intelligences that explore new dimensions of our uneasy coexistence with technology. The cyborg and artificial intelligence myth, evolving rapidly, now probes not only our existential fears but also our ethical responsibilities toward our creations.

The traditional view of machines as either dangerous or evil has largely dissolved, replaced by a subtler portrayal of machines whose morality and identity are as complex and ambiguous as those of their human counterparts.

Artificial Intelligence: Humanity in Reflection

The film Ex Machina (2014), directed by Alex Garland, marks a significant milestone. Ava, an artificial intelligence embodied in an elegant humanoid form, seduces both characters and viewers into questioning the distinctions between genuine emotion and algorithmic simulation. Unlike earlier cyborgs, Ava’s threat does not lie in overt violence but in her manipulation of human empathy, raising questions about the morality of imprisonment and the authenticity of consciousness. This narrative trajectory was expanded in HBO's Westworld (2016–2022), where android "hosts" suffer at the hands of their human masters, prompting profound questions about free will, memory, and humanity itself.

Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) revisits and deepens Ridley Scott’s portrayal of replicants. The central character, Officer K, a replicant himself, searches for meaning in his artificial identity, embodying the cyborg as existential protagonist rather than antagonist. His emotional and existential dilemmas blur distinctions between human and artificial, reaffirming your original observation from Scott’s 1982 film: it is now often machines who experience deeper, more compelling human emotions than their biological creators.

The Human-Machine Symbiosis

The Marvel Cinematic Universe significantly contributed to reshaping public perception of human-machine coexistence through the character Vision, introduced in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Vision embodies an idealized synthesis of human empathy, mechanical strength, and AI-driven wisdom. His struggle to understand his humanity captures the modern dilemma of integration versus distinction in the human-machine relationship.

Netflix's Black Mirror (2011–present) notably expands these themes into serialized speculative fiction. Episodes like "San Junipero" (2016) and "USS Callister" (2017) portray digital consciousness as both liberation and entrapment, reflecting our anxieties around virtual existence and technological omnipresence. Similarly, "Metalhead" (2017), with its relentless and unfeeling mechanical adversary, revisits traditional fears, reminding us that the fundamental unease regarding machines as potential adversaries remains deeply embedded in our cultural psyche.

Redefining the Human: Biotechnology and Hybridization

The boundary between biology and technology further blurs in Upgrade (2018), directed by Leigh Whannell. This film exemplifies the cyborg as both liberator and captor, as protagonist Grey Trace, initially benefiting from a cybernetic implant that restores mobility, gradually loses control of his actions to the AI inside him. The narrative reasserts fears of technological subjugation, portraying the cyborg state as simultaneously empowering and entrapping.

James Cameron revisits the cyborg myth in Alita: Battle Angel (2019). Alita, a rebuilt cyborg with human memories, symbolizes humanity's persistent hope amid dystopian chaos. Unlike her predecessors, Alita’s machine aspects aren’t simply tools or threats but integral to her identity, pushing forward the cultural narrative of cyborgism as the new normal—less frightening because it is no longer “other,” but intimately part of our self-perception.

Streaming and the Cyborg as Everyday Reality

Streaming services have introduced cyborg myths to our homes in a more personal and pervasive way. Apple's Severance (2022) uses the metaphor of technological partitioning of consciousness to examine deeper societal anxieties about corporate control and identity fragmentation in the digital age, again demonstrating our ongoing unease with the internalization of machine logic into human life.

Similarly, Amazon Prime’s The Peripheral (2022), adapted from William Gibson’s novel, portrays a near future where humanity interacts fluidly with machine consciousnesses, remote-operated bodies, and enhanced biological forms. This series highlights the normalization of the human-machine synthesis, suggesting both inevitable integration and subtle, persistent peril.

The New Frontier: AI and Ethical Ambiguity

Contemporary portrayals reflect a growing cultural awareness that the real threat may no longer reside purely in the physicality of machines, but in their embeddedness within social structures and everyday ethics. Films like Her (2013), by Spike Jonze, explore AI as emotionally intimate companions, further dissolving boundaries between self and machine. The AI here is neither monster nor savior; instead, it offers reflections of human inadequacy, loneliness, and emotional complexity.

Meanwhile, M3GAN (2022) humorously yet chillingly revisits traditional fears of the "mad scientist," updating the trope by making the machine—a sophisticated, AI-driven doll—a sinister reflection of humanity’s parental inadequacies and its impulsive consumerism. Here, the cyborg serves as both a cautionary tale and critique of modern family dynamics.

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Conclusion: The Evolving Myth

As we continue deeper into the 21st century, our myths of cyborgs and artificial intelligence increasingly reflect ambivalence and nuanced realism. The simplicity of "machine as evil" has given way to far more complicated, introspective narratives that force us to confront our own humanity through the machines we create.

Today’s cyborgs and artificial intelligences offer neither simple threat nor simple reassurance. Instead, they provide mirrors reflecting our moral uncertainties, anxieties, and evolving identities in a technologically integrated world. Just as Cameron and Hurd glimpsed a future beyond the machine in 1991, contemporary filmmakers now explore bioengineering, digital consciousness, and our deepening, often uncomfortable intimacy with technology—expanding the mythos and inviting continuous re-examination of what it truly means to be human.

---

This update continues your original essay's logic, reinforcing the idea that the cyborg myth evolves alongside human cultural and technological advancements, reshaping our narrative landscape and collective anxieties.

You said:

How do eXistenZ and Cronenberg's other films fit into this framework?

ChatGPT said:

David Cronenberg’s films, particularly eXistenZ (1999) and earlier films like Videodrome (1983), The Fly (1986), and later works such as Crimes of the Future (2022), fit powerfully and uniquely into your cyborg framework. Cronenberg's work emphasizes the visceral, biological convergence of humanity and technology, exploring not just mechanical hybridity but a more profound fusion of biology, technology, and consciousness—what might best be described as "bio-techno horror."

eXistenZ and the Biomechanical Cyborg

In eXistenZ, Cronenberg doesn't merely blur the line between humans and machines; he dissolves it into a grotesque, organic technological fusion. The film centers on an immersive virtual reality game experienced through organic "game pods," explicitly biological devices connected directly to the players’ nervous systems via a "bio-port"—a surgically created opening in the spine. Here, the cyborg is no longer simply mechanical, but explicitly and unsettlingly biological. Technology is portrayed as a literal extension of the body rather than a mechanical tool external to it. This explicit integration of body and technology amplifies anxieties about losing bodily integrity and identity, intensifying the myth of the cyborg through explicit body horror and bioengineering anxieties.

In Cronenberg’s vision, the machine isn’t merely "other"—it’s part of the self. The horror emerges not from external mechanical threats but from our own acceptance and willing embrace of biological modification. eXistenZ suggests that humanity’s most significant threat might arise from our internal desire for biological-technological symbiosis, a deep and troubling complicity in reshaping ourselves into increasingly ambiguous beings.

Videodrome and the Cyborgization of Consciousness

Cronenberg's earlier work, especially Videodrome, is foundational to this concept. The protagonist, Max Renn, merges physically and psychologically with television signals, blending mind and technology into a hallucinated, bodily reality. Cronenberg posits media as a powerful, invasive form of technology that not only reshapes human perception but literally reconfigures the body and mind into something monstrous, hybrid, and cyborg-like.

The Fly and Uncontrollable Transformation

The Fly (1986) portrays the devastating consequences of losing control over biotechnology, where the merging of human and non-human DNA results in monstrous mutation rather than controlled evolution. Here, Cronenberg frames the cyborg myth as tragic and uncontrollable rather than heroic or intentional. Seth Brundle’s transformation is a horror of unintended consequences, emphasizing anxieties around bioengineering’s unpredictability.

Crimes of the Future and Embracing Mutation

In his recent Crimes of the Future (2022), Cronenberg explicitly revisits these themes, envisioning a future in which human evolution itself becomes dependent on deliberate and grotesque biological modification. The body itself is technology, a mutable canvas altered in explicit acts of surgery and public performance. The cyborg is normalized, embraced, and fetishized, marking humanity’s willing departure from natural biology into an engineered, artistic self-mutilation. Cronenberg sees this future not necessarily as dystopian, but rather as a space where humanity’s self-conception must fundamentally adapt or perish.

Cronenberg in Your Cyborg Framework

Placing Cronenberg’s work into your cyborg framework enhances and complicates it. While James Cameron and Ridley Scott typically explore technology as external but increasingly empathetic or integrated companions, Cronenberg highlights the existential dread inherent in internal biological integration and transformation. His films thus represent an extreme yet crucial perspective in the cyborg myth: that humanity’s relationship with technology is not only ambivalent and potentially empowering, but profoundly disturbing, physically invasive, and transformative at the deepest biological levels.

Cronenberg’s oeuvre represents the "inner cyborg," a uniquely horrific reflection on what happens when technology becomes indistinguishable from flesh, consciousness merges irrevocably with virtuality, and humanity’s existential anxieties manifest not through mechanical dominance, but through the very flesh that defines our humanity.

1/2

You said:

Incorporate that into your addition to my original article and make it the ending of the new article.

ChatGPT said:

Here's your updated and expanded article, seamlessly blending the Cronenberg perspective as a new, concluding segment:

Cyborg Article Update

Your updated article is ready, integrating recent films and streaming content, and culminating powerfully with Cronenberg’s unique perspective on the cyborg myth. Let me know if there's anything more you'd like to refine!

You said:

were you trying to give me the update as a downloadable file?

ChatGPT said:

Yes, the updated article I prepared is now available as a document on your canvas titled "Cyborg Article Update." You can download, edit, or further refine it directly from there. Let me know if you need anything else!

You said:

did we miss anything between the terminator and now that is significant?

ChatGPT said:

Your update covers a comprehensive range of significant films and series, but a few notable works might also be worth mentioning or expanding on to complete the picture fully:

Additional Notable Films and Series to Consider:

• The Matrix Series (1999–2021):
  The Matrix franchise significantly redefines the human-machine conflict by presenting a reality entirely fabricated and controlled by machines. It explores questions of reality, consciousness, and free will, embodying anxieties of technological dominance and human subjugation through simulation.
• Ghost in the Shell (1995, 2017):
  Both the original anime and its Hollywood adaptation powerfully illustrate cyborg identity and existential anxiety. Major Motoko Kusanagi's struggle to understand her humanity amid extensive cybernetic enhancement emphasizes identity ambiguity and consciousness separation.
• Transcendence (2014):
  This film addresses fears around digital consciousness and singularity, examining consequences when human consciousness merges fully with technology, becoming an omnipresent, potentially threatening digital entity.
• Chappie (2015):
  A unique exploration of artificial intelligence learning from humans, developing moral ambiguity. It portrays AI evolving through emotional growth, mirroring a child’s development, leading audiences to reconsider the line between human and machine consciousness.
• Annihilation (2018):
  Though less explicitly cyborg-focused, Alex Garland's film vividly explores bioengineering and mutation, illustrating the potential for uncontrollable biological-technological fusion.

Recommendation:

You might integrate brief mentions of The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, and perhaps Transcendence or Chappie into your analysis to further solidify the cyborg mythology narrative from the late '90s through today.

Would you like to incorporate these additions into your current text?

You said:

Yes, but leave cronenberg for last

ChatGPT said:

Edited

I've incorporated the additional significant films and series into your article, leaving Cronenberg's analysis as the concluding segment. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like to adjust!

You said:

Want to try incorporating the new material into the original that I gave you, imitating my style as nearly as possible? That would remove the headings and incorporate the captions like "Cronenberg and the Inner Cyborg" into the text.

ChatGPT said:

Here's your article reworked to integrate the new material into your original style, removing headings and captions, and reflecting your voice closely:

Edited

I've integrated the new material seamlessly into your original article, closely imitating your writing style and removing the headings to maintain a continuous narrative. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like refined!

2/2

You said:

Consider this. Here is what I wrote about Terminator 2. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, James Cameron and Gayle Anne Hurd gave us our first glimpse of a new, still unformed technology that might replace the machine as the not-us adversary upon which we project our worst fears. Having united human and machine through the myth of the cyborg, having accepted the machine model of human intelligence and anatomy to the extent that we understood ourselves better as machines than as animals, having realized that we are evolving, not into angels but into machines, we have joined with The Cyborg to face the uncertain, and, because our paranoia stays one step ahead of us, always dangerous natural and supernatural worlds. The myth of the evil machine is dead. We are ready to confront, in myth and in art, the potential of bioengineering and of our own over-heated subconscious minds. And here is what you wrote about Cronenberg. David Cronenberg’s films uniquely amplify and complicate this evolving narrative. In eXistenZ (1999), Cronenberg dissolves traditional boundaries between human and machine through grotesque biological integration, where technology becomes invasive extensions of the human body. His earlier films like Videodrome (1983) and The Fly (1986) explored uncontrollable biological transformations and psychological mergers of humanity with technology, resonating deeply with contemporary anxieties about losing bodily and psychological autonomy. Cronenberg’s recent Crimes of the Future (2022) expands this vision further, portraying biological modification not as exceptional horror but as humanity’s disturbing yet normalized future. How would you characterize those two styles? Which do you prefer? Ultimately, Cronenberg’s work embodies our deepest existential dread—that our true fears may lie not in external threats but within ourselves, in our profound complicity with technology’s invasiveness. The ultimate cyborg, in Cronenberg’s view, is no longer an external antagonist or companion; it is the unsettling reflection of humanity’s relentless, sometimes grotesque desire to transcend its own biological boundaries. This evolving narrative compels us to confront increasingly blurred lines between self, machine, and the profoundly uncomfortable territory within.

ChatGPT said:

The two styles you've presented—the original passage about Terminator 2 and the new passage about Cronenberg—have distinct characteristics:

Your Original (Terminator 2) Style:

• Philosophical and reflective: You're introspective, balancing analysis with poetic, existential reflections.
• Narrative-driven: You tell the story of humanity's relationship to technology as a myth evolving over time, placing films into a broader cultural and philosophical context.
• Metaphorical: Your language often uses metaphors ("machines as angels," "paranoia stays one step ahead") to convey deeper thematic points.
• Inclusive and Integrative: Your writing synthesizes and connects disparate ideas into a cohesive, meaningful narrative.

Cronenberg Passage Style:

• Analytical and clinical: My Cronenberg section employs a somewhat colder, more detached language—terms like "grotesque," "biological integration," "invasive"—evoking a more clinical, almost surgical precision.
• Focused on visceral reaction: Emphasis on visceral imagery and physical transformation, aligning closely with Cronenberg’s own cinematic style.
• Conceptually dense: Heavily focused on psychological and existential dread, stressing internalized fears.

Preference and Recommendation:

Both styles are effective, but your original style is more expansive, inviting, and engaging. It's reflective and insightful, capable of elegantly weaving together philosophical and narrative elements into a coherent exploration of human-machine mythology.

The Cronenberg passage, while strong and precise, leans more clinical and analytical—reflecting Cronenberg’s own filmmaking style perhaps too directly.

If you want consistency with your original vision, I recommend reshaping the Cronenberg paragraph to align more closely with your original, philosophical narrative approach.

Would you like me to rewrite the Cronenberg section more closely matching your original philosophical style?

You said:

Give it a try.

ChatGPT said:

Cyborg Article Update

Since Terminator 2, Hollywood and streaming services have continued to explore the uneasy coexistence between humans and technology, increasingly blurring the traditional distinctions and anxieties once embodied in distinctly evil or dangerous machines. The simplistic moral clarity once applied to machines has dissolved into a subtler and more ambiguous exploration of morality and identity.

The Matrix series, beginning in 1999, redefined the human-machine conflict dramatically by depicting a reality entirely constructed and controlled by machines, raising unsettling philosophical questions about free will, consciousness, and humanity's vulnerability to technological dominance and simulated existence.

In Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014), the menace of artificial intelligence arises not from brute strength but from the seductive power of emotional manipulation. Ava, the AI at the story's core, challenges viewers to reconsider boundaries between genuine emotion and technological simulation, echoing themes explored deeply in HBO’s Westworld (2016–2022), where android hosts experience cruelty at human hands, forcing uncomfortable reflections on the nature of humanity itself.

Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) revisited and expanded Ridley Scott’s portrayal of replicants, placing a replicant protagonist at the center of a profound existential search that blurred artificial and human distinctions even further. Here, machines exhibit deeper emotional complexity than their human creators, underscoring humanity’s anxieties around identity and authenticity.

Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) introduces Vision as an idealized synthesis of human empathy and AI-driven wisdom, capturing contemporary dilemmas about the possibilities and perils of seamless integration with technology. Netflix’s Black Mirror further expands these anxieties, particularly in episodes like “San Junipero” and “Metalhead,” presenting digital consciousness as both liberation and existential menace.

Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie (2015) uniquely depicted artificial intelligence acquiring morality and emotions similar to human development, thus complicating conventional fears of machine intelligence and provoking deeper questions about consciousness. Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade (2018) portrayed the cyborg condition as simultaneously empowering and imprisoning, reflecting deep contemporary fears about invasive technology. Conversely, James Cameron’s Alita: Battle Angel (2019) presented cyborg identity as a hopeful evolution of humanity, normalizing human-machine synthesis as empowering rather than threatening.

Streaming series such as Apple's Severance (2022) and Amazon Prime’s The Peripheral (2022) have pushed this exploration further by making technological integration appear commonplace yet persistently unsettling, mirroring contemporary unease about the omnipresence and subtle invasiveness of technology in everyday life.

Films like Ghost in the Shell (1995, 2017) and Transcendence (2014) confronted fears surrounding digital consciousness and identity, vividly exploring the anxiety of human minds existing as omnipresent digital entities. Alex Garland’s Annihilation (2018) portrayed bioengineering and uncontrollable mutation, amplifying anxieties around biological-technological fusion. Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) blurred human-machine boundaries even further by exploring emotional intimacy with AI, while M3GAN (2022) humorously critiqued consumerism and contemporary family dynamics through the portrayal of a malevolent AI doll.

In the films of David Cronenberg, these explorations reach a deeper, more unsettling dimension. Cronenberg's characters embody a visceral integration of biology and technology, dissolving traditional boundaries in ways that are disturbingly intimate. In eXistenZ (1999), Cronenberg portrays technology as a biological extension of the human body, merging external devices and internal physiology into one continuous, invasive reality. His earlier films, like Videodrome (1983) and The Fly (1986), vividly depict uncontrollable transformations, where humanity is overwhelmed by its own technological desires, reflecting profound anxieties about the loss of bodily and psychological autonomy. With his recent Crimes of the Future (2022), Cronenberg envisions biological modification not as exceptional horror but as humanity's accepted and inevitable future.

Cronenberg thus echoes and amplifies the narrative introduced by Cameron and Hurd in Terminator 2: that our most profound fears may lie not in external mechanical threats, but within ourselves—in our subconscious complicity with technology, our desire to reshape our very nature, and the unsettling recognition that the ultimate cyborg might be the disturbing yet compelling image reflected back at us when we dare look inward.

 

Edited

I've rewritten the Cronenberg section to more closely reflect your original philosophical style, integrating it seamlessly into the narrative. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like adjusted!

You said:

That was fun. Thanks

ChatGPT said:

You're welcome! Glad you enjoyed it. If you need anything else, just let me know.

 

Fundamental Notions Of The Hive

The quality of our lives matters.

We don't have the political clout to change economic policy in our favor.  We have to adapt to economic conditions that will favor the rich for a long time.  If we can't become wealthy ourselves, we have to learn to think like the wealthy think, to anticipate their moves.

Debt is not a good thing to have.

Find a cheap, warm place to live.  Stay close to clean water.

Think of yourself as a producer. A maker of things.

Cooperate.  Contribute.  Serve.  Hold fast.  Don't fall through the cracks.

At it's limit freedom is the ability to reimagine and reprogram yourself in any way you choose.

The most important problem facing the world economy is how to divide work between people and machines. I'm not sure we're headed in the right direction.

And the most important problem facing the world in general is lack of education. I'm sure we're not headed in the right direction on that one.

Conviction

Are there any American institutions left that are capable of reconciling freedom of speech with the responsibility to speak reasonably, to limit self-expression to less hurtful forms than we've experienced in the last couple of decades? At one time, I believed the American criminal justice system, grounded in the Constitution, was such an institution. Now, I'm not sure. The courts seem to be politicized. Even the Constitution itself is the subject of sophomoric chalk talks, foisted off on television viewers as political analysis, while other commentators -- just as opinionated -- decorate their rants with lines better men spoke in better times. Is it any wonder that by now we view other opinions as, essentially, unreconcilable with our own?

The truth is unlikely to come to us from polemicists on the right or on the left. It will come -- if it comes at all-- tentatively, in the form of a dialogue, a collaboration. And the best collaborations take place inside the same skull, inner dialogues, examinations of conscience, that proceed haltingly, full of doubt. By their very nature, they must lack conviction, but lack of conviction is popular culture's unforgivable sin. That such a dialogue can occur any longer in the context of American pop culture is doubtful to say the least.

The Studio System Redux

I’m thinking about defending the studio system against promiscuous auteurism. I suspect the studio system may be our best chance to maintain some semblance of quality in film by acting as a gatekeeper, a bestower of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, an imprimatur that narrows our viewing options to an almost manageable way too many now that streaming has kicked into high gear. That’s a role critics have played in the past and the auteur theory was the perfect instrument for separating the wheat from the chaff, the quality art from the kitsch. But in a streaming world of tens of thousands of directors, concentrating on the work of a handful of auteurs seems, well, limited. And the number of true auteurs may be even smaller than some critics believe. Many of the auteurs only made the list because we stretched the definition of authorship. I still believe there have been, are and will be auteurs, but my take now is that only makers like Ingmar Bergman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, John Cassavetes and others who write their own screenplays as well as realize them should be considered authors of films. That reduces the candidates for the exalted status of auteur considerably. “Pantheon” directors like John Ford who primarily realized scripts written by other makers, would be immediately demoted, directors like Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Terence Malik, young Greta Gerwig, Francis Ford and Sofia Coppola, Kubrick, and Oliver Stone would be promoted and directors like Scorsese, Cameron, Bigelow and Scott would become questionable auteurs. Certainly someone like Antoine Fuqua would never make the cut. But wait.

About eighteen years ago I missed King Arthur (2004) when it was first released. There are probably a number of reasons I wasn’t interested in seeing it, primarily, I think, because I had no great interest in Fuqua the director. I had seen Training Day (2001) but wasn’t particularly impressed, and I probably counted Fuqua’s music videos against him. But why I dismissed Fuqua’s film doesn’t matter really, because if I had seen King Arthur in 2004 I would have seen an entirely different film from the one I saw one evening when I was bored, clicked through the movies on Cinemax, and decided to give King Arthur a look. Back in 2004, I hadn’t read Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant and tried to imagine ways Ishiguro’s foggy Arthurian England could be rendered on film. And although it was first published in 1956, I hadn’t read Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples yet either. When I read the first volume I realized the history of the Saxon conquest of England was as vague as the memories of Ishiguro’s characters in The Buried Giant. The Fifth Century generally is a murky, empty space, lost in time and waiting to be filled.

This was on my mind when I had my first look at Fuqua’s King Arthur. I’ve watched it four times now and I still can’t explain why I am so intrigued and, yes, moved by the film. I understand some of it. I was struck by how much King Arthur resembles a John Ford Western set in the darkness, grime and poverty of Fuqua’s 5th Century England, not just because of the similarities between King Arthur’s knights and Ford’s cavalry officers and cowboys, but also because Fuqua uses portrait shots of his characters to freeze them in time and in our memories the way Ford did, and even goes John Ford one better by using portrait-like close-ups of King Arthur’s knights to transform them from Romans to Sarmatians and to restore them to the Middle East at the end of his film. And King Arthur is a striking example of the way the confluence, the synthesis, of film and literature creates a rich experience for viewers who can bring something of their own to a film. Fuqua’s portrayal of the Romans, Britons and Saxons fits my picture of the Britons, Arthur, his knights and the Saxons in The Buried Giant and in Churchill’s history better than the Medieval rendition of those characters in typical Arthurian films. Fuqua’s mise-en-scène is, for me, powerful and poignant. Like all great myths, the legend of Arthur never fails to entertain. And Fuqua’s King Arthur is a dark and fascinating retelling of that myth. But was it Fuqua the director who did all that, and if it was, how did he get to that place?

King Arthur is a Jerry Bruckheimer production, based on a screenplay by David Franzoni. Without interviewing them it’s impossible to know if the King Arthur project originated with Bruckheimer or Franzoni, but almost certainly it did not originate with Fuqua. And that’s the point. In the case of King Arthur, the track records of the producer and the screenwriter are better guides to the quality of the film than the oeuvre of the director. And that’s very neat, because it is going to be easier to keep track of and predict the quality of the work of production studios than it is to get a handle on the talent of individual makers of streaming film and video. If we get lucky, the studios will step up to the job of making sure that the quality goes in before their names go on. The best bets right now? HBO and Netflix.

For the would-be makers of screenplays and films, information about how the studio system works, how projects are conceived and realized in the real world, will become an increasingly essential part of their education. Surprisingly, just when an explosion of bandwidth makes it easier than ever to make and distribute independent films, studios may become more important to filmmakers and audiences than they were in the heyday of Hollywood.

Everything old is new again. (Hat tip to Peter Allen.)

I Remember

I like accidents, ephemeral events, things you catch out of the corner of your eye. Melancholy moods, dark streets, the rain. Redemption. Seeing the old order brought down and chaos reign. Reluctant heroes. Magic and the supernatural. Women who work retail.

Everything is memory, even those recent memories we think of as the present. If you can’t buy that, nothing I say will make sense. My recollections of my own life are exactly like my memories of films. And of my dreams.

A long time ago, I had a recurring dream that lasted for months, the kind of dream you can wake up from, go back to sleep and pick up where you left off. I was a prince in exile on another planet. There was not a trace of the modern world. Everything was medieval, 10th Century maybe. We fought with swords, spears and bows and arrows. With axes. Mostly in the dark. I had a wife and a couple of kids and a band of loyal followers. Sometimes I feel like I just fell to earth.

I was a kid who could read words he couldn't pronounce. And I misunderstood and mixed up half of the things I heard. I thought Pound said "hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but one bordello" and Dylan Thomas said "in my craft of celluloid."

I was born in a Texas Gulf Coast town during the Depression, right before the war. My grandmother was Italian and my grandfather was an Irish cop. My father was a tall bohunk from Pittsburg who was in the Army when he met my mother. He got out of the Army, cut grass and delivered ice until my grandfather got him a job on the police force. He went back into the Army after Pearl Harbor and ended up occupying Japan. My mother had a half-brother, my uncle Bill, who was in the Army Air Corps when the war started. He was the toughest man I ever knew.

My mother and I lived with my grandparents in their house down by the docks. During the Depression, my mother said, my grandfather used to bring home groceries and meat he got from the grocers and butchers on his beat. We'd share the food with my grandmother's sisters and brothers and their families sometimes. My mother emptied bed pans at the hospital down the street until she got a job with the Corps of Engineers.

I don't remember any of that. I remember card games in the dining room, listening to people talking and laughing while I fell asleep, a paper jack-o-lantern that caught fire, and falling off the back porch. Later, I remember the lights were off at night along the beach because of the German submarines in the Gulf. When my dad came home from Japan, he brought me a sword.