Enframing the Self: The Hardware and Software of HARDWARE

Telotte, J.P. "Enframing the Self: The Hardware and Software of Hardware." SFS #67, 22.3 (Nov. 1995): 323-332.

Stanley's HARDWARE echoes TERMINATOR movies, ROBOCOP (1987), BLADE RUNNER, et al. but also uniquely questions our software (vs. hardware) as dream capability offering distance and detachment from reality. (Maly, 27/06/02)

Immediately relevant from Telotte's Abstract: The science-fiction film seems grounded in a constant tension between [...] our hope for what might be and our [...] fears [...]. [HARDWARE] foregrounds that tension by "quoting" numerous other science-fiction and horror films — by a sort of collage strategy that enables it to frame key questions about the nature of the science-fiction genre, about the technology from which it draws its life, and about what audiences expect from such films. In its reflexive treatment of what has become a commonplace of recent science-fiction films, [...] a deadly confrontation between humans and a humanly-crafted/human-destroyed robot. Hardware not only raises the usual concerns about the fragile nature of humanity and the threatening potential of our technology; out also suggests how our films — themselves a product of technological craft — can help us deal with those concerns by drawing on that generic tension to better "frame," as Heidegger put it, our humanness.(p, 332)

RDE, Title, 26Aug19