[(Projecting the Shadow: Cyborg Hero in American Film)] [Author: Janice Rushing] published on

by Janice Hocker Rushing

Through in-depth examinations of six representative films, the authors' track the narrative's thread from the frontier hunter to the rise of his technological nemesis, demonstrating how each film dramatizes a phase of an unfolding myth.

Unknown Binding

First published December 1, 1995

Reviews

[Scooter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part human, part machine, the cyborg is the hero of an increasingly popular genre of American film and, as Janice H. Rushing and Thomas S. Frentz so provocatively suggest, a cultural icon emblematic of an emergent postmodern mythology. Using the cyborg film as a point of departure, Rushing and Frentz examine how we rework Western myths and initiation rites in the face of new technologies.

Through in-depth examinations of six representative films—Jaws, The Deer Hunter, The Manchurian Candidate, Blade Runner, The Terminator, and Terminator 2—Rushing and Frentz track the narrative's thread from the hunter to his technological nemesis, demonstrating how each film represents an unfolding hunter myth.

For each movie, Rushing and Frentz show how uninitiated male hunters slowly lose control over their weapons. In Jaws, a 'soft' man, dominated by technology, can re-acquire the heroic hunter qualities he needs by teaming up with a 'savage' man and a 'technological' man. In doing so, he can still conquer the prey. The Manchurian Candidate charts how technology can turn a human into a weapon; Blade Runner perfects the artificial human with its manufactured replicants who are "more than human"; and The Terminator introduces a female hunter who leads humanity in its struggle against technology.

[Paul]

This is a favored literary/movie criticism book that breaks down the idea of trans-modernism and explores the theme of "projecting the shadow" of technology in the American worldview and offers a potential resolution (and redemption) in the trans-modern "meta-narrative." The authors connect the ideas of the sacred vs the profane, initiation (male and female), and the sacred marriage in the exploration of the profane and egoistic search for technological mastery of the nature by humans.
Technology is seen to be a shadow of humanity, capable of over-taking humans- but also capable of being reconnected to humanity, with the sacred marriage of the hunter and the hunter to produce love, rather than hatred of the enemy or the egoistic attempt at the mastery of nature.