"War and Science Fiction in Contemporary Film and Video Games"
Panel at 2013 SCMS Conference in Chicago, organized by Tanine Allison
From stealth technology and unmanned drones to combat robots and laser weapons, today’s military technologies bring science fiction into reality. This panel examines the recent evolution of the military-industrial-entertainment complex, which has spurred further interconnections within American media between the war and science-fiction genres. In a slew of recent blockbusters, the Department of Defense has collaborated with Hollywood to produce science-fiction films with military themes, while refusing to support films set in real-world conflicts that portray American soldiers in a less-than-flattering light (e.g., The Hurt Locker, 2008). Despite its science-fiction premise and action-movie structure, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), for example, assembled the most extensive support network of military agencies in Hollywood history. In video games, violent shooter games with science-fictional backdrops have become a billion-dollar staple of the industry. Even those game franchises with roots in historical recreation—such as Call of Duty, originally a World War II combat simulation—have turned toward futuristic settings.
The four panelists explore the political, aesthetic, and cultural ramifications of the widespread hybridity of these two genres in American culture, questioning what the military seeks to gain (or risks losing) by allying itself with science fiction. Tanine Allison observes the explicit return to World War II in science-fiction blockbusters like Captain America (2011) and Battleship (2012), evincing a desire to recreate the clear-cut moral stakes of the “Good War” by imagining supernatural or alien enemies. Gerry Canavan shows how the attempt to transform an alien-invasion film like Battle Los Angeles (2011) into a military recruitment film ultimately unravels; by showing American troops as the victims of a technologically dominant military force, the film critiques the U.S.’s own imperialist aggression. Similarly, Nathan Blake examines how the latest Call of Duty game, Black Ops 2, set during a future cold war with China, exhibits an ambivalent relationship to military technology—simultaneously fetishizing it and perceiving it as an external threat to the underdog American soldier. Finally, Matthew Thomas Payne discusses how two recent shooter games that imagine near-future invasions of America remediate the war film genre to contemplate the politics of American exceptionalism.
From stealth technology and unmanned drones to combat robots and laser weapons, today’s military technologies bring science fiction into reality. This panel examines the recent evolution of the military-industrial-entertainment complex, which has spurred further interconnections within American media between the war and science-fiction genres. In a slew of recent blockbusters, the Department of Defense has collaborated with Hollywood to produce science-fiction films with military themes, while refusing to support films set in real-world conflicts that portray American soldiers in a less-than-flattering light (e.g., The Hurt Locker, 2008). Despite its science-fiction premise and action-movie structure, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), for example, assembled the most extensive support network of military agencies in Hollywood history. In video games, violent shooter games with science-fictional backdrops have become a billion-dollar staple of the industry. Even those game franchises with roots in historical recreation—such as Call of Duty, originally a World War II combat simulation—have turned toward futuristic settings.
The four panelists explore the political, aesthetic, and cultural ramifications of the widespread hybridity of these two genres in American culture, questioning what the military seeks to gain (or risks losing) by allying itself with science fiction. Tanine Allison observes the explicit return to World War II in science-fiction blockbusters like Captain America (2011) and Battleship (2012), evincing a desire to recreate the clear-cut moral stakes of the “Good War” by imagining supernatural or alien enemies. Gerry Canavan shows how the attempt to transform an alien-invasion film like Battle Los Angeles (2011) into a military recruitment film ultimately unravels; by showing American troops as the victims of a technologically dominant military force, the film critiques the U.S.’s own imperialist aggression. Similarly, Nathan Blake examines how the latest Call of Duty game, Black Ops 2, set during a future cold war with China, exhibits an ambivalent relationship to military technology—simultaneously fetishizing it and perceiving it as an external threat to the underdog American soldier. Finally, Matthew Thomas Payne discusses how two recent shooter games that imagine near-future invasions of America remediate the war film genre to contemplate the politics of American exceptionalism.