A Study Of Technical Narrative Of Hollywood Science Fiction Films

By presenting the near future,Hollywood science fiction films as a genre,continuously reveal the interaction,alienation,control,and integration between technology and society,technology and people,technology and nature.Both the illusions offering a voyeuristic glance beyond the veil of time and the aesthetics for conceptual design and youth culture have inspired people’s enthusiasm for movie watching and scientific exploration.Up to now,researchers have mainly focused on Hollywood science fiction film narration from the perspectives of filmology,literary narratology,and anthropology.Some of them have simply introduced cutting-edge technology and technical aesthetics;others,though analyzing science fiction films from angle of the external relationship between technology and narration to describe various changes following the technological intervenes,have ignored the fact that technology is a dynamic code built into the science fiction film.In recent years,people began to think about technology and gradually realized that it is not merely a tool of epistemological significance,and that ontologically,its availability and materiality make technology both a prerequisite for art and an essential problem-solving method,and it has changed people’s understanding of the film itself and eliminated the limitation of film researches.This article,therefore,regarding technology and narrationas a whole and considering it as a way of thinking and perspective,puts forward the concept of technical narration,and hypothesizing that science fiction films reflect the dominant position of technology respectively in terms of form and content.On the one hand,the theory responds to the viewpoint of classic film theory that film narrative research should return to the film itself,which differs from traditional narrative research.On the other hand,the views such as "Technological rationality" from Frankfurt School,"Consciousness is like a movie" from Bernard Stiegler,"Technical ethics," "Technological embodiment" from phenomenological school,"Alienation" from Marx,"Technological non-neutralization" have provided theoretical support for the construction of technical narration from the perspective of technology and analysis of technical narration from the perspective of narration.This article is composed of six chapters to achieve the purpose of writing through specific case analysis.Chapter One defines technical narration,analyzes film’s ontological characteristics as a media technology and image technology from a philosophical perspective,and gets an answer to the question how technology narrates.Firstly,the author argues that the background of technical narration is the narratological technical turn.Secondly,the author discusses technology in multiple dimensions,pointing out the polysemy of technology in technological philosophy,the cognitive constructive power of film technology as a media technology,and its great potentials of production relations and meanings,which lay material and methodological foundation for the technical narration.Finally,the author uses the technological philosophy of phenomenology as the theoretical resource and analyzes the rationality of technical narration,and distinguishes technical narrative from a traditional narrative in terms of their value and characteristics.Chapter Two technically analyzes Hollywood science fiction films and their genre elements.First,by defining science fiction film,the author technically studies science fiction film attributes,with emphasis on the significance of technology in film classification and value orientation.Science fiction films are divided into two types,the hard and the soft,and sub-types of hard science fiction films are taken as the research objects in the article.By analyzing the relationship between science fiction and technology,it is concluded that it is technology that results in the advantages and impureness of science fiction films,that there is no narration without technology,and that a spectacle is a narrative.Technology as a mediator makes some elements prominent so as to strengthen varied styles of science fiction and to construct different technical-material preferences.The technical interpretation,different from the audience perspective,reveals the value distinctions,subjective initiatives,and variability of the technological logic in Hollywood science fiction films.Chapter Three analyzes the technical narrative structure of Hollywood science fiction films.Technical narratives are divided into hard and soft technical narrations,the former typical of its tangible technology,the latter characteristic of its intangible technologies such as methods,means,thinking,and software.The coupling relationship of hard and soft technical narrations have either promoted or hindered the revolution of films.Based on the mediology theory and new media theory,this chapter reveals how the equipment and facilities are related to the film coders and explains how technology narrates and the result it achieves.It is revealed that soft and hard technological narrations embody non-neutrality and intentionality of technology;man gradually relinquishes the subjectivity of narrative to technology,which foretells the changes of science fiction films in terms of narrative form,narrative characteristics,and narrative core.Chapter Four analyzes two technical narrative forms in science fiction films.The first is the interface narrative.The interface stands for the tool for viewing and the construction and presence of the film language.The interface narrative is an essential practice of technical narration,and it proves Walter Benjamin’s views that medium tells medium,and that more and more of what the medium shows is the medium.As the symbol of the overall materialization and mediation of people’s life,it allows technology to get rid of the regional constraints of the human experience gradually.In the films,the director makes real-life turn to the clues and memories on the screen and constructs the character’s behavior and consciousness.Science fiction’s expression forms are transmitting from narration to presentation.The film provides a way for technology to create space and stories.Every story is connected deep inside by technology,and it builds an atmosphere for viewers.The second is VR narrative.Following the upgrading in viewing equipment,film narration has piloted experiments: linear storytelling is replaced by non-linear scene presentation and the selection of character action paths.Because of this change,experience has become the best way to integrate into the virtual world.When considering productive interaction,we also need to pay attention to the design options and the consequences of choices.It is safe to say that an open and dynamic multi-level narrative method is up and coming.The overlap between interface narrative and VR narrative reflects the ability of film media to repair its media attributes and enhance the effect of narration.Chapter Five discusses possible worlds’ construction by the technical narration in Hollywood science fiction filmsfrom the following three perspectives.The first is time.The processing and presentation of time in science fiction films directly determine how space exists in technical narratives.Technology not only constructs the time view but also presents it.The quality of time presentation reflects the ability to build the possible world of science fiction films.The second is the space.The technical narrative decides the details of the "possible world" and how it is presented.As the carrier of time and the teller of the background story,space is crucial in constructing the aesthetic style of technical narratives in science fiction films.Space produces content by using links and interactions.The third is "era".In the technical narration of science fiction films,"era" is the combination of time,space,and aesthetic styles.It provides historical clues and expresses the desire for the reconstruction of time and space.Chapter Six explores the future-oriented technical narration in Hollywood science fiction films.At first,it is pointed out that the technical narration’s concentration is shifting to the post-human.The author argues that technology may lead to a narrative crisis because technology creates and exhausts people’s desire for stories,just like Stigler’s view on art crisis.Secondly,the schematization of the future in Hollywood science fiction films is analyzed.Hollywood science fiction films have stolen the future’s definition,manipulated people’s ideas,cognition,and consciousness.It makes people feel powerless for the future and lose their imagination and right to speak about it.Since the definition of future is stolen and designated by Hollywood science fiction films,the author puts forward the idea of "alternative future” and criticizes the Hollywood science fiction films’ depriving behavior on other civilizations,which lose the right to spell it out.The author believes that the characteristics of narration could be used to construct a diverse and diversified relationship between humanity and technology.Such a relationship is related to the development of the technical narration of science fiction films and a philosophical issue related to humanity’s destiny.In summary,from Chapters Three to Chapter Six technical narration of science fiction films are studied from two perspectives—technology and narration.Chapters Three and Chapter Four focus on technological narration from the angle of technology,pointing out that science fiction film’s technical narrative is a technicalization of narrative experience and subjectification for technology.This method embodies the unity on means and purpose,form and content,which highlightscharacteristics of imaging technology.Chapters Five and Chapter Six focus on science fiction films’ technical narration from the perspective of narration,and technology is criticized from the angel of metaphysics.Technology,as form and content,has become the object of reflection.The conclusion,based on Hollywood technical narratives,further points out that the future will penetrate our daily lives by science fiction aesthetics and products in the technological environment.The new technological environment calls for neo-cultural subjects.It will be reconstructed in the understanding,design,and imagination of technology.The author believes that science fiction film’s technical narration provides a unique practice space and a basis for the new technology and cultural entity.