A escatologia negacionista no cinema de ficção científica em meio à crise do Antropoceno

Abstract

This analysis investigates unconscious processes involved in the formation of social phenomena, particularly the recurring tendency of science fiction blockbusters to oppose humans and cyborgs within apocalyptic narratives. Three films released across the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Westworld (1973), The Terminator (1984), and The Matrix (1999), constitute the object of analysis. Data production and collection were based on a methodological combination of sociology of cinema, psychoanalytic approaches, film criticism, and screen ethnography. Grounded in Ulrich Beck’s (2011) concept of risk society and in discussions surrounding the Anthropocene, the central hypothesis argues that the agents responsible for planetary collapse in science fiction narratives are projections of humanity itself. Such projections emerge through the denial of human responsibility for the environmental crisis and for the future of the planet. The analysis articulates historical developments in technology and their dissemination throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in order to demonstrate how the relentless cyborg on the cinema screen may be interpreted as the repressed dimension of Anthropocene humanity, transformed into raw material for popular cinema.