Digital Dualism, circa 1846

"We who are born into the world's artificial system can never adequately know how little in our present state and circumstances is natural, and how much is merely the interpolation of the perverted mind and heart of man. Art has become a second and stronger nature." 

               Nathaniel Hawthorne

From Mosses from an Old Manse, quoted by David E. Nye, America as Second Creation: Technology and Narratives of New Beginnings. 

 

Home or Frontier? On the Ambiguity of "Gravity"

Over the past couple of days I’ve had some further thoughts on the movie Gravity. (My initial post, "Where Gravity Meets Bedford Falls," can be read here.) Anyone who hasn’t seen the film and who cares about not having the plot spoiled should read no further; what follows is all spoiler.

The movie resonates in some interesting and ambiguous ways with a central recurring theme in our pursuit of technology: the lust to open and occupy new frontiers. The lure of the frontier has also been a central recurring theme in American history, of course, which is one of the main reasons American history has been so inexorably tied to technology. Gravity’s director and co-writer, Alfonso Cuarón, is Mexican, so perhaps those themes don’t interest him, but they interest me.

The direction of Gravity’s plot makes it, in a basic sense, an anti-frontier movie. It’s all about the need of Sandra Bullock's character, Dr. Ryan Stone, to return to Earth. She has to get home. There’s no mission to explore an unknown planet, destroy a threatening asteroid, or investigate mysterious transmissions from Jupiter. The plot hinges on what is, in essence, an industrial accident during a routine repair mission a few hundred miles above Earth.

What’s not routine is our reaction as viewers to that routineness. It’s clear from the reviews and blog entries on Gravity that people have been stunned and moved by the beauty of Earth as it’s depicted from the astronaut’s perspective. Also stunning is Cuarón’s depiction of the awesome vastness of space. The genius of  the film—the reason people find it so effecting—is the way Cuarón positions his human characters between those two poles. Seldom has the strangeness of our position in the cosmos been defined so starkly. Dr. Stone’s desperation to return to Earth is more than a fight for survival. It’s a flight from existential terror.

I don’t think Cuarón has any particular ax to grind for or against technology, but it’s hard not to notice in Gravity how alien the space environment is for the humans who are moving around in it. This is something that’s always mystified me about space enthusiasts. I understand being motivated by the adventure of exploring space, but the appeal of actually living there escapes me. You can’t breathe in space! Or walk! You have to put on an incredibly bulky suit every time you go out the door. It seems like it would get old pretty fast.

As many critics have pointed out, Dr. Stone's psychological motivation is to come home not only from outer space, but also from her disconnection from life. Having lost a daughter in a freak accident, she loses herself in work, and in long drives to nowhere after work. This suggests that Cuarón might be commenting on the technological project, after all. Is he saying that space exploration is equivalent to an escapist drive into the night?

Probably not. In fact, Gravity’s concluding scene can be seen as suggesting exactly the opposite, though its meaning seems more than ambiguous: It seems downright contradictory. On the one hand, when Stone pulls herself up on the shore, gasping for air and grasping terra firma, we see an affirmation of how good it is for her to be back where she belongs. She’s isn't running away anymore. She’s alive, and grateful to be alive: she can embrace the pain that comes with the joy of existence. Meanwhile the debris from the disintegrated space ship flame out in the sky above her. She’s home, and space travel seems behind her. 

Or is it? Stone dragging herself onto the beach is an obvious allusion to humankind pulling itself out of the ocean and onto land to begin its evolutionary adventure as a terrestrial species. In case we miss the point, Cuarón shows us a frog swimming alongside Stone as she escapes the sinking space capsule and swims toward the water’s surface. Once on dry land, Stone doesn’t just lie there. She pulls herself to her feet and stands, and the low angle from which Cuarón shoots her rise leaves no question that he wants us to consider her standing a courageous, heroic act of will.

All this seems to suggest not so much that Stone has learned to accept the limitations of life on Earth, but that she’s found a new determination to accept no limits. It’s a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit, to the implacable drive for progress that brought us out of the primordial soup and took us to…well, outer space! In contrast to the queasiness with which Bulloch’s character reacts to being in space at the beginning of the picture, she seems ready now to take on any challenge. It’s only a matter of time before she’ll be back in orbit, aiming to break the EVA record set by her now-dead colleague, Matt Kowalski, exploring, with plucky good humor, the next unexplored frontier.

Teilhard de Chardin and Buckminster Fuller would have loved it.

Evolution Image: Machine Overlords

©Doug Hill, 2013

Where Gravity Meets Bedford Falls

[ Note: I updated this post on January 30, 2014, to add the comment  in brackets below from an interview with Alfonso Cuarón that appeared in the New York Times that day.]

Yesterday I saw Alfonso Cuarón's latest movie, Gravity, and enjoyed it. 

Having seen the advertisements beforehand, I wasn’t surprised that it was highly reminiscent of a particular sequence in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a sequence that includes one of the two most powerful film images I've ever seen. 

 

The image (a starker version of the one here) is of Gary Lockwood’s character, Dr. Frank Poole, spinning off into space after being cut loose by the renegade super computer HAL. It's an evocation of existential isolation that profoundly moved me when I first saw it, as a teenager stoned on acid in a San Francisco movie theater in 1968, and that has stayed with me ever since.

[ Months after I'd posted this, during the late January build-up to the Oscar awards, the New York Times ran an article on the three top contenders for the Best Picture award. Gravity was one of them, and in the article Alfonso Cuarón comments on the idea that inspired him and his co-writer (and son), Jónas Cuarón, to make the film:

“The simple image of an astronaut spinning into the void. We talk about how terrifying that would be. We also recognize immediately the metaphorical possibilities.”

The video that accompanies the article includes a shot from Gravity that is strikingly similar to the shot I remember from 2001. ]

Cuarón's film plays on the theme of existential isolation, too, but not, for me, as effectively as Kubrick's. The reason for that, I suspect, is that in Gravity the problem of aloneness is at the center of the action, explicit and ultimately resolved. In 2001, it's always there, but in the background, much as it is in our day-to-day consciousness.

The other image that’s always moved me, by the way, is from Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. 

It comes in the sequence where Jimmy Stewart’s character, George Bailey, stumbles in horror down the streets of Pottersville, the sleazy city that Bedford Falls will turn into if George kills himself.  (The image here isn’t precisely the right one, either, but it’s the closest I could find.) What always struck me about that image is how soundly it trumps the film’s saccharine ending. In real life, George’s nightmare came true. To some degree we all live in Pottersville now, in large part due to the exigencies of technique. 

Alfonso Cuarón's previous film, Children of Men, provides a pretty convincing idea of what Pottersville might, before too long, become.

Announcing an imminent arrival

A personal note: I've been absent from this space for the past couple of months as I've worked to prepare my book for epublishing. That process is nearly complete.  

Not So Fast is going through the final formatting stages at BookBaby (ah, technology!) and should be available at Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, and a bunch of other e-publishing sites within a month, probably sooner. I'll let you know when.

Not So Fast is the result of some twenty years of study of the history and philosophy of technology, and the product of some three years of writing and rewriting. I'm very proud of it, and very happy that it's at last going to be out there for people to read.

As I've shared in another post, this blog was originally aimed at helping me find a traditional publisher by building a following as a commentator on technology. The exercise has proved both frustrating (I still haven't found a traditional publisher) and rewarding (I've immensely enjoyed the art of essay writing and have gotten some satisfying response to my efforts). Now that the book's almost out, I'll return to those labors.

Thanks to all those who have been with me so far.