Someone in the tute mention sliders too (she was a fan as well) hehe now i dont feel so “old”
anyway the presenter brought up Taiwanese movie Secret and HongKong drama serial A Step Back into the Past to illustrate Bauman. Pretty interesting stuff (her presentation and Bauman <when read indept> )
Now i wanted to bring up korean movie (later adapted by hollywood) with regards to time travel
ll mare (Siworae) (2000)
The Lake House (2006)
the importance is the postbox in both films, relating to the TARDIS in Doctor Who
(of course both movies selling point was the love story) but yea…
Brief on the TARDIS:
The TARDIS(Time and Relative Dimension(s)in Space)is a time machine and spacecraft in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. A product of Time Lord technology, a properly maintained and piloted TARDIS can transport its occupants to any point in time and space. The interior of a TARDIS is much larger than its exterior, which can blend in with its surroundings through the ship’s chameleon circuit.
These “devices” are manmade (post box to recieve mail, communication mode), the TARDIS a technology… and how it functions i would say is our overactive imagination and hidden psychological issues that empower it to “work”…our attempt to think we can CONTROL time, navigate our lives…
Why time travel? To know the future? To go back in the past?
I say its because we, can’t let go and can’t handle not knowing in this age where we are bombarded with changes…the world is getting smaller with more and more advances like the technology (internet) msn, email, webcam, time is no longer a factor, (jet lag aside) we can go virtually ANYWHERE!
(view of earth from the moon)
Space is getting smaller, soon Earth (some already feel) will become over populated, there is i heard some research to find another live-able planet to start all over again if need be…now… this is why sci-fi is such a successful genre, they address everything that is going on but in a different mode, a temporal space…
Like, Michel Foucault’s ‘boat’ as a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exist by itself that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea; it can accomplish that ‘giving itself to infinity’ thanks to sailing away from the home port and keeping its distance. (Bauman:99) these devices help to conceptualize Space. Space need not be a physical/visual actual space but merely a point of reference perhaps a bit like time, intangible but existing. We have this insatiable need to belong, yet at the same time curiousity always gets the better of us
http://www.virgingalactic.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/jun/10/spaceexploration.uknews
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4178747.stm
(just think of Sir Richard Branson and his space travel- VirginGalactic)
thus our need to be on the prowl in search of, stretching time, making FULL USE of our lives perhaps.
In the conquest of space, time had to be pilant and malleable and above all shrinkable through the increased ’space-devouring’ capacity of each unit. (Bauman:115)
Of course it can be linked back to our insatiable consumption, such that space and time is now in a way almost a commodity… anything can be make into a business
HA! even OXYGEN! something as intangible and readily available (as long as you are living and breathing) YET…up sprung Oxygen Bars
http://www.healthoxygen.com/ (check out the list of products)
Now where was i?…right…SPACES…
Empty spaces are first and foremost empty of meaning, Not that they are meaningless because they are empty: it is because they carry no meaning nor believed to be able to carry one that they are seen as empty (more precisely, unseen). In such meaining-resistant places the issue of negotitation differences never arises: there is no one to negotiate with. (Bauman:103)
Here i would like to bring in Star Trek and Stargate Alantis
like Doctor Who, involving time travel in space or to spaces, and of course no less the use of machines to get to where they need, at times fighting/protecting territories as well but it is never ending because (aside from the fact that it is a drama series) it can go on almost forever because “home” (earth) is gone…
Maybe it is just me but a common theme in sci fi is this need to
1)trace back, to un-do, to save, to preserve while also
2)to confront new frontiers, explore, find a back up plan
strangely contradictory really… perhaps to do with…the
Pathology of the mind trying in vain to force sense upon a world devoid of stable and trustworthy meaning, but a pathology of public space resulting in a pathology of politics: the wilting and waning of the art of dialogue and negotiation, the substitution of techniques of escape and elision for engagement and mutual commitment.
Think of the United Nation or World summits that we have, to come together to unite, to communciate,
update one another across countries…how successful or open are they really? Selfish needs or the ened to protect their OWN, not all is always revealed…(disinformation perhaps)
Was watching an episode of Stargate Atlantis the other day where the crew had “discovered” and defended only to have to hand it over to the ‘ancients’ (original owners of the land) who had returned after much difficulty…
It is interesting why there are so many humans, non humans, species, sub species, lands, cultures, behaviours and so on in this mish mash genre called sci fi, it is almost as if by being on THE OTHER planet gives it more autonomy but when digging deep, the issues/conflicts can essential be seen in our current situtation (here on MOTHER EARTH)…
When all is said and done about sci-fi aside from the obvious subcultures and fandom created i see the more humanisitic anxieties to it, as put by Bauman
The ability to live with differences, let alone to enjoy such living and to benefit from it, does not come easily and certainly not under its own impertus. The ability is an art which like all arts requires study and exercise. (like fans who memorize lines, know the machinery names, planet names, the segregations and so fourth) The inability to face up to the vexing plurality of human beings and the ambivalence of all classifying/filing decisions are on the contrary self perpetuating and self reinforcing; the more effective the drive to homogeneity and the efforts to eliminate the difference, the more difficult it is to feel at home in the face of strangers. (escape perhaps to realm of Sci Fi where we can rattle of names of created races but when asked to deal with real life issues, impending threats…it becomes taboo, and people clamp shut)
Looking back in time, history of the various wars, Hitler and his anti-semitism, colonial to postcolnial times where there was worries about degeneration (to do with Darwin Theory) and increasing anxiety about hybridity
another anxiety that Sci Fi deals with is MACHINES. Man MADE technologies YES but what IF they start to have a mind of their own? I have friends who after dropping their hp/ipods talk to IT going “please dont die on me, i did not mean to drop you i swear” (i will be next to them with a raised eyebrow), my friend calls her laptop her “significant other” and swears that when it get “cranky” she just have to plead with it and it will be “soothed” (righ…uh huh…) I guess with how much we see technologies as an extension of ourselves creating robots that can take over the “housewifely” jobs… it is not surprising that we worry one day these machines will take over our lives…even replace us…
Going back to Bauman…he writes
Time has become the problem of the ‘hardware’ humans could invent built appropriate use and control.
Time difference from space, can be manipulated and has become a factor of disruption. Time becomes money once it had become a tool (or weapon)
The disembodied labour of the software era no longer ties down capital: it allows capital to be exterritorial, volatile and fickle.
Capital acquires more room for manoeuvre- more shelters to hide in, a larger matrix of possible permuations, a wider assortment of available avatars… … …
ie: who is pumping money into what is kept hush hush like money laundering…what scary bio chemical warfare research is hidden underground, what weapons of mass destruction to conquer spaces (territory), that can wipe out in a flash (time)… check this out: Weapons of Mass Destruction Handbook and the shock of Russia latest terror…the Vacum Bomb dubbed the Father of All Bombs … it is no wonder that more and more people are getting anxiety attacks, media love to play up the idea of biochemical/warfare weapons and (of course we are guilty of getting ra-ra about it)
but yea i guess essentially at the end Bauman writes
History is a process of forgetting as much as it is a process of learning and memory is famous for its selectivity. Very well put dont you think? Sci fi def has elements of that in its screenplay and lastly i guess at the end of the day: it is difficult to conceive of culture indifferent to eternity and shunning durability, it is also difficult to conceive of morality indifferent to the consequences of human actions and shunning responsiblity for the effects these actions may have on others. (maybe thats what sci-fi tries to remind/show us)The advent of instantaneity ushers human culture and ethics into unmapped and unexplored territory, where most have learned habits of coping with the business of LIFE have lost their utility and sense.
If you made it this far, go watch some Doctor WHO:)
(would be interesting to check out the earlier Doctor WHO)
Presenter showed us this picture of the various Doctor(s)
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