Utopia in images. Continuity in the human-robot relationship in 20th century cinema

Abstract

New technologies in the last century brought much progress and massive changes to daily life in Western societies. The relationship people express towards technology is typically ambivalent, fears as well as fascinations. However, these feelings are not new. Scholars from different fields have researched our relationship with technology and found that similar feelings accompany the introduction of each new technology. This thesis contributes to this debate by analysing six films of three different time periods of the last century: Metropolis, Algol, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Forbidden Planet, The Matrix and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). We found that in these films, both utopian and dystopian elements show continuity. Furthermore, we found that the abovementioned ambivalence is always present.