All that is solid melts into the future - imaginary perceptions of the body in futuristic movies

Abstract

This paper investigates the projections of the social imaginary on the future of the human body in the cinematographic image of science fiction. We seek, therefore, to understand how images of the future of mankind play out in the movies. The question that guided us along the way was: based on the images we create today in science fiction films about tomorrow, which desires, fears, hopes, anxieties and expectations have we pointed out in our collective construction of the imaginary of the future? We started with the social perspective of the future that advertising in the 19th century pointed to for the year 2000. A positive view of progress from the technology in our lives. Then, through an analysis of a constellation of frames from contemporary futuristic films, inspired by the studies of the researcher Aby Warburg, we propose a perspective of reading and understanding of a social memory and its respective affects on the contemporary projections of the future of the body human. At this moment, we can observe the imagens reflect the pessimism in regard to the contemporary relationship between technologies and the body.

Keywords
human body; imaginary of the future; cinema; science fiction; Aby Warburg