| This study examines the ideological functions of race in Hollywood science fiction cinema from the modern civil rights period of the 1950s to the present. The project focuses on how imaginings of societies of the future are constructed, and the significations of these imagined futures as depicted in science fiction cinema. The explicit and implicit treatments of race formation, constructions of identity, and representation in cinema are at the center of this inquiry. More specifically, this study uses the Hollywood science fiction film to examine the relationship between imagined representations of the future and historic interpretations of racial discourses and social relations in the United States.;In analyzing films including The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959), The Omega Man (1971), and The Matrix trilogy (1999, 1999, 2003), this study argues that there is a preponderance of racialized tropes of otherness in the science fiction film that correlate directly to a shifting narrativities of race and social relations in public discourse in the United States since the 1950s. Methodologically, this project consists of textual, historical, and theoretical analyses, and considers the construction and representation of the future city according to Hollywood science fiction cinema, while contemplating the relationship between imagined representations of the future and historical experience. |
