This article considers differences between the representation of mutation in science fiction films from the 1950s and the present, and identifies distinctive changes over this time period, both in relation to the narrative causes of genetic disruption and in the aesthetics of its visual display. Discerning an increasingly abject quality to science fiction mutations from the 1970s onwards—as a progressive tendency to view the physically opened body, one that has a seemingly fluid interior–exterior reversal, or one that is almost beyond recognition as humanoid—the article connects a propensity for disgust to the corresponding socio-cultural and political zeitgeist. Specifically, it suggests that such imagery is tied to a more expansive ‘structure of feeling’, proposed by Raymond Williams and emergent since the 1970s, but gathering momentum in later decades, that reflects an ‘opening up’ of society in all its visual, socio-cultural and political configurations. Expressly, it parallels a change from a repressive, patriarchal society that constructed medicine as infallible and male doctors as omnipotent to one that is generally more liberated, transparent and equitable. Engaging theoretically with the concept of a ‘structure of feeling’, and critically with scientific, cinematic and cultural discourses, two post-1970s’ ‘mutation’ films,The Fly(1986) andDistrict 9(2009), are considered in relation to their pre-1970s’ predecessors, and their aesthetics related to the perceptions and articulations of the medical profession at their respective historic moments, locating such instances within a broader medico-political canvas.
This essay analyses the French film 120 BPM (Campillo 2017) in relation to its aesthetics and critical reception in the context of scientific advances in human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) therapy as well as revised sociocultural attitudes towards, and political strategies for dealing with the pandemic. Differing from previous scholarship, which examines Campillo's direction of 120 BPM and its narrative nuances (Clarke 2018), and the film in the context of civility and empathy (Delgado 2018), it argues that the treatment trajectory of the virus has been paralleled by a transition in the way that the disease is both represented and received in media, film and television. While not understating the fact that AIDS remains a serious public health concern in certain regions, public attitudes towards AIDS, led by advances in therapy and understanding of the disease that render it as much less threatening in the West, have correspondingly shifted. This outlook contrasts with the initial inertia and antipathy in addressing the crisis, especially in France, which had a higher number of declared cases than other major European countries (Kim 2016, 347). Indeed by the end of 1993, World Health Organization (WHO) figures showed that France, Spain and Italy were the leading European 'AIDS countries' (Berridge 1996, 1). Like the UK and US, the French media initially framed HIV/AIDS as a 'gay disease' while 'the French gay community [in terms of its social solidarity] was very disorganized and even invisible at the outbreak of the epidemic' (Kim 2016, 349). Although no official French government action occurred until 1983, significant policy change in 1988, along with the establishment of gay advocacy groups such as ACT UP-Paris in 1989, and worldwide medical intervention have since helped to reframe the disease. This refocusing reverberates in the visual style of 120 BPM, particularly its cinematography and framing, which consistently position the spectator amidst the HIV/AIDS community. Although the film focuses on a period in the 1990s when survival rates were still low and death rates rising, it was paradoxically released at a time of relative optimism regarding the prognosis for HIV/AIDS, with several contemporaneous claims of a 'cure' that were circulated by the news media.The study here demonstrates this refocusing via qualitative analysis of key scenes as they relate to scientific and media discourse and changes in the socio-cultural and political climate in France regarding HIV/AIDS. Such an approach is significant because of recent parallel relationships between the media and scientific lexis as they shape public perception of
Andrea Newman's 1969 novel, A Bouquet of Barbed Wire, has been adapted twice for television: first in 1976, and later in 2010. Controversially, the novel and its adaptations inferred father – daughter incest, a subject that was considered taboo during the 1970s. Arguably, though partly arising as a result of available technologies at that time, the repressed nature of incest is reflected in the claustrophobic aesthetics of the 1976 television version. In contrast, the more diverse cinematography, panoramic settings and less populated frames of Ashley Pearce's 2010 version correspond with an increasingly transparent approach to incest and child abuse, consistent with the contemporary zeitgeist, which fosters openness across all social and cultural structures. In particular, the changed climate involves a mounting preoccupation with, and sensitivity to, child welfare and legislation, arising as a result of national and international media revelations of child abuse in both domestic and institutional scenarios. Engaging theoretically with Raymond Williams’ concept of a ‘structure of feeling’, as well as referring to Freud's seduction theory, and television theorists including Karen Lury and John Ellis, this article locates parallels between the way that incest is represented and the socio-political and cultural contexts of the respective television adaptations of Newman's novel.
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