(For Preview: Full Version (with notes) will be handed out at 4/7 session.)

Draft chapter taken from a forthcoming book:

Technoscience in Contemporary Film: Beyond Science Fiction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, to be published 2001.

Aylish Wood

University of Aberdeen

Scotland

In the previous two chapters, I discussed images of technoscience through the terms subjects and objects. The subject of technoscience in Lorenzo’s Oil, Medicine Man, Lawnmower Man and Jurassic Park can be seen to be constituted in terms of knowledge formations and institutions. The object of technoscience in Twelve Monkeys, D.A.R.Y.L., Junior and sex, lies and videotape is revealed to be the result of a complex relationship with the practices and processes of technoscience. In this chapter, I draw on an alternative framework, one in which the subject/object dualism is substituted for patterns of negotiations and re-connections. I discuss Gremlins, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Strange Days and Fresh Kill, not simply as texts which refuse or resist the positions put in place by the workings of technoscience within the narrative; rather, I argue that these texts work against the idea that subject and/or object positions are necessarily secure, that they are anchored to a singular dynamic between individuals and technoscience. Instead, such relationships are viewed as contingent and unstable, renegotiated by the shifting patterns of connections across the narrative.

The readings put forward in this chapter are informed by those areas of science-technology-studies which conceive of science and technology as complex sets of processes and practices that intersect with each other in the production of knowledge or things. In addition to thinking through the events leading to a product, technologies can be analysed as something which is not simply determined by their apparent functionality, but also according to a complex interrelationship between social locations and functionality. This theory moves away from a linear perspective in which functionality is the sole determinant of social uses, towards a framework in which the technological and the social space both render, and are rendered by, an on-going process of renegotiation.

Such a framework overlaps with the idea of patterns of re-connections evident in the writings of Deleuze and Guattari. According to these theorists, the spread of connections through and around any set of interactions is accompanied by periods of disruption, by a loosening of control over patterns of connections. Inevitably, the systems of control come back into place, and boundaries are remade; however, there may remain changes in the patterns of connection. The different texts I use in this chapter fit this framework to differing extents. Gremlins poses questions about the relationship between humans and technology that are taken up again in Gremlins 2, this sequel further explores the possibility for change, but only within an isolated and contained space. Strange Days takes the question of new patterns of connection beyond the parameters of Gremlins and Gremlins 2. Instead of situating the technology and the humans within the isolation of a building that can be set aside at the resolution, the technology and the humans are part of a community in which relationships of love, friendship, law and order and economic power are put into transition because of the shifting connections with the technology. Fresh Kill, the final film I discuss in this chapter, also has a narrative which is open to an exploration of the shifting patterns of connections between humans and technologies. However, in this video-feature, the small changes in the power relations that occur within changing patterns are never certain ¾ they are always contingent.

Gremlins and Gremlins 2 both explore a series of relationships between humans and their technological environments. They are not so much about the processes and practices through which knowledges and things are constituted, as about the ways in which a thing is redefined through various uses. In the following readings, technologies are understood not simply as delineated or delineating, with fully defined or defining functions through which a human and a technology co-exist in a static pairing. Instead, the relationship between the human and the technological is one of renegotiation. In the process of renegotiation, the technology and the human being both take on new meaning. This is not to say that either necessarily undergoes a physical transformation, rather that they operate and function in different ways. It is through the new dynamic established in the process of renegotiation that new meanings about humans and technologies are created.

In Gremlins and Gremlins 2, the processes of renegotiation are put into motion by the figure of the Creature, a green and scaly embodiment of the gremlin. The Creature disturbs the relationship between humans and technologies by transgressing and then renegotiating the boundaries initially in place. In so doing new sets of connections are established, ones in which humanness and technology take on different ways of being. Superficially, the Creatures enter into the plots of Gremlins and Gremlins 2 via a similar route ¾ Gizmo, a Mogwai, comes into the possession of Billy, the main protagonist of both films. In Gremlins, Gizmo is a Christmas present; in Gremlins 2, Billy rescues "him" from the clutches of the twin scientists. However, the transformative effect of the Creatures varies between the two texts, and the distinction resides in the different kinds of technological environments that Gremlins and Gremlins 2 depict. Gremlins features domestic and everyday technologies, whilst Gremlins 2 takes place in a heavily technologised environment.

The everyday setting of Gremlins is established with the first shot of the town ¾ a parodic picture postcard scene, with the spires and roofs of the houses covered in a fall of snow. However, this is not a prosperous town since the people of Kingston Falls find it hard to pay their rent, and/or are without employment. The absence of a major employer within the community accentuates the sense of an economic and industrial recession. Technology is introduced into Gremlins primarily through two characters ¾ Randall Peltzer and Murray Futterman. Futterman is a depressed, blue-collar worker who constantly complains about the lack in the marketplace of American technology. Citing his 15-year-old Southern Harvester as an example, he expresses nostalgia for the old days when the US could produce long lasting technologies, ones that did not constantly break down, as do the "foreign" goods to which Futterman constantly alludes. The counterpoint to Futterman is Peltzer, a self-employed inventor who makes small technologies for the home. His various devices include the Bathroom Buddy, the Peltzer Juicer, an egg breaker, a remote light dimmer and phone control. The problem with all these devices is that their ability to function is short lived, like the technological capabilities of the USA of the period, they are not quite up to the competition.

The problem of living with unreliable technology is explored through the Peltzer family. Living in a house surrounded by malfunctioning inventions, their life is constantly interrupted by breakdowns that they endure because of family loyalty. This antipathetic relationship between humans and technology is nicely illustrated through the workings of the Peltzer Juicer. As Billy, the son of the family, walks into the kitchen to get a glass of juice, the score takes on a discordant tone. Framed in a low-angled shot, the Juicer looms up in the foreground of the right-hand lower quadrant of the screen, whilst Billy glances at it suspiciously from the back of the frame. As he begins to make a glass of juice, Billy visibly relaxes as the juicer seems to function, only for the machine to cover both him and the kitchen with orange-pulp. In Gremlins, then, the initial relationship between humans and technology is one of a resigned accommodation to something that does not function correctly. However, as the film progresses and the Creatures hatch, the technology becomes something altogether different ¾ weapons with which the Creatures can be attacked. This is especially apparent in the sequence in which Lynn Peltzer defends herself against the gremlins in her kitchen. Here the various kitchen utensils ¾ food mixer, microwave, knives ¾ are used to violently dismember and pulp the creatures.

In contrast to the relationship of resignation surrounding malfunctioning technology in place in the opening section of Gremlins, Gremlins 2 begins by establishing an interaction that foregrounds alienation. In a different setting, New York instead of a frosted Capra-esque Kingston Falls, technology initially stands for an entrepreneurial ethic based on destruction and subordination. This is evident in the mise-en-scène, as well as operating as a more overt narrative theme, as much of the action takes place in a ‘smart’ building in New York City. This building, Clamp Tower, functions with the aid of sophisticated technology that controls the environment, building security, as well as the activities of the employed personnel.

The theme of technology as a potentially destructive presence is further emphasised as the narrative of Gremlins 2 opens with the establishment of a dualistic opposition between progress and decline. Progress is represented by brash newness, the embodiment of which is Daniel Clamp, a developer who aims to demolish Chinatown and replace it with a simulated ‘Chinatown.’ Decline is represented through the character of Mr Wang; originally introduced in Gremlins as the guardian of Gizmo, in Gremlins 2 he is significantly more aged and frail. This frailty is echoed by the dilapidation of his curiosity shop, which is dusty and full of old decaying objects. When progress and decline confront each other with a ‘visit’ by Clamp to Mr Wang’s shop, the link between progress and technology is established by Clamp’s presence being conveyed into the shop via a television-monitor and video-player; as such he intrudes into Mr Wang’s space as a pre-recorded non-interactive tele-presence. When Mr Wang refuses to accommodate Clamp by accepting his take-over offer, the video and television are left behind, disposable items from the culture of progress, and a symbol of the inevitable displacement of the older order. The voracity of progress is fully effected with the death of Mr Wang, and it is made visible as Gizmo, who presumably has lived with Mr Wang for the period between the two films, escapes from the shop and the screen-filling jaws of the mechanical digger just at the moment they break through the walls to demolish the old building.

In the development of a new Chinatown, Clamp seeks to erase a place of lived community, and to convert it into a space in which the assumed identity of that community is repackaged into a commodity to be consumed by a culture hungry for difference. Furthermore, the development that will replace this area of Chinatown is planned to mimic the technological supremacy of Clamp’s head-office and showcase building. However, if it is like Clamp Tower it will offer little to the individual. In this latter building workers are identified by a bar code, and denied the opportunity to customise their workspaces through plants or unauthorised artwork. In addition, the surveillance system in operation in the building prevents any subversion of the work practices of the Clamp regime; cigarette breaks are stolen on punishment by summary dismissal. Working in the Clamp building is depicted as dehumanising; an experience underlined through Billy and Kate, the couple from Gremlins who function within the narrative as the representatives of an ‘ordinary’ humanity ¾ they are the archetypal young couple struggling to get on in an alienating cityscape. This alienation is initially figured by their entry into the narrative as voices only, their individuality lost in a high-angle shot that frames a street crowded with people hurrying to work. Only the second shot picks them out as individuals, and even then they are being jostled by the people that surround them.

The opening of Gremlins 2 inscribes the oppositions old versus new, progress versus decline, good versus bad. In so doing a technological imperative is established, one in which progress occurs at the cost of the individual, community and a sense of historical context, when the new comprehensively obliterates the old. Technology, directed by Daniel Clamp, can only encompass the new; there is no place or space for anything other. However, this technological imperative is set up only to be dismantled, the entry of the Creatures into the narrative will disrupt the technological progression towards alienating newness.

The transformative presence of the Creatures is visible in different ways in both Gremlins and Gremlins 2. As so often happens in cartoons, in both films everyday objects become weapons, and as their function alters, so too does the relationship between the humans and the technology. In Gremlins, the department store becomes a source of implements to kill with — sporting equipment, chain saws, and buzz saw blades. Similarly, the photocopier and child’s train set become instruments of torture in Gremlins 2, the shredding machine a weapon, and the microwave a means to enable the reproduction of the gremlins ¾ the microwave explodes causing the building’s fire sprinklers to go off. This latter scene is given further meaning when considered as an intertext to Gremlins. It is a reworking, and possibly a revenge for the scene in which Lynn Peltzer kills a number of creatures in her kitchen by using various domestic appliances as weapons, one of the more memorably explosive encounters occurs with the microwave. Such transformations suggest that the evolution of a technology need not end when it comes off the production line, it can continue in unpredictable ways depending on the re-connections made around it.

Gremlins 2, however, is not only concerned with these functional transitions around individual objects. As an example of a technologically controlled and controlling environment, Clamp Tower becomes, metaphorically and literally, a space in which relations are altered between technology and humans. As discussed above, the technology of the building is initially used in the pursuit of an alienating employment practice, a practice in which employees are reduced to the status of replaceable parts of a process, instead of individuals who contribute something to the process. This effect is carried over to the look of the foyer of the building, one that is cold metal and black marble; furthermore, everyone is dressed in grey, from the chief executive to the tour guides ¾ even the laboratory coats are grey. In contrast, by the end of the film much of the building is in chaos and half-light, the gleaming surfaces covered with graffiti and hand, feet, tooth marks and other less definable prints of the Creatures.

This transition does not simply represent a change in the functions of the building. It is also the location of the transformations in the relations between the major characters of the film and the technology of the building. Daniel Clamp shifts from his position as a minor deity of progress ¾ the building his plaything, his office a parodic heaven above the cloud line. By the end of the film he is back down amongst the people; he has seen the error of his technological ways and is ready for his next development scheme: simulations of American small town communities. More interesting is Billy’s relationship to the building. Having been chastised for demonstrating traces of individuality, it is his specific knowledge of the gremlins, plus his growing knowledge of the building and how it works, that leads to the destruction of the Creatures. In an echo of the debates about mass culture and rationalisation, Billy refuses his position as a component of the technologised processes of Clamp Tower. As he does so, his individualism and personal knowledge are foregrounded as they become the means by which he saves the trapped people through utilising the centralised communications systems of the building, the time controls and tele-videos.

The occurrences I have described are not simply inversions of a duality, a bad use of technology versus a good use of technology; after all, the technologies used by Billy are the remnants of the control and surveillance system which had earlier characterised the 'inhuman' centre of the building. Instead, the presence of a third term, the Creatures, complicates the transitions between the uses of the technologies. Technology, instead of being only associated with a dehumanising and dystopic vision of progress, becomes the means to both capture and save Clamp Tower; with added implications for New York City, and presumably the world. In a similar way to the photocopier, microwave and shredder, the functions of the technologies of Clamp Tower are initially renegotiated through the actions of the Creatures, and then subsequently by Billy’s counteractions. Just as the Creatures captured the building by taking over the environmental controls, the elevators, and the telecommunications network, so Billy uses the phone system, the fire system, and the centralised time controls, to recapture the building. In subverting the uses of technology, in making new connections through and with it, the Creatures and Billy re-inscribe the sets of social relations around that technology. In this process technologies cease to be only alienating things, and become instead a part of the lived space. As Andrew Ross has written:

Following Ross’s comments, the activities of the Creatures and Billy provide the context for seeing technologies as a part of a cultural process, not simply as something remotely imposed by the operations of a figure such as Clamp.

This potentially open resolution to the narrative also has implications for the renegotiations that have occurred around the technologies of the narrative. I have suggested that it is possible to read the relationship between humans and technologies as one that undergoes a process of transformation. But this then poses another question: where do these renegotiations and transformations lead? It might be expected that these renegotiations represent a departure from the dualities in place at the beginning of the text ¾ progress/decline; new/old; technological/non-technological ¾ and to an extent they are since they suggest a potential for new connections between humans and technologies, ones that are not already and always fully determined. However, in Gremlins 2, and also Gremlins, this has very evident limits as the potential for re-connection is seemingly closed down almost as soon as it begins. The scenes inside the genetic research laboratories ¾ Splice O’ Life ¾ encapsulate this clamping down on new possibilities. The work of the scientists who inhabit this laboratory space is focused on the transformation of mundane things; as such they represent the starting point for the impact of technoscience on the everyday aspects of human living. The experiments include creating non-destructible tomatoes suitable for easy transport, and, in a play on recycling culture, waste scavengers are turned into sources of electricity in the conversion of the sewer rat into a new energy source. After the Creatures erupt into Clamp Tower, the laboratory becomes one of the central sites of chaos as they ransack it and consume the various experimental potions. In a spectacular display of the transformative powers of science, each Creature successfully undergoes an alteration to a gremlin hybridised variously with a bat, a spider, electricity, vegetables, and brainpower. However, like the monster in many horror films, these hybridisations are unpredictable; they are uncontrollable transformations that destroy the site of their creation, and in a riotous sequence the laboratory is well and truly trashed.

That the majority of these hybrid-Creatures do not survive the activities of Billy would suggest that the potential for transformation is closed down. Similarly, the potential for connection and re-connection between the humans and technologies is apparently dissipated since Daniel Clamp is ready to move onto his next project, and ‘Billy the Hero’ is ready to sell-out by designing the new project. The survival of the female hybrid-Creature, however, keeps the open the possibility for future transformations.

Whilst Gremlins and Gremlins 2 can be read as films which foreground technology as a part of a social process, the operations of power within this social process remain relatively unclear. In this section, I will discuss Strange Days as a film which focusses both on the relationships between the human figures and the technology of the film, and on the ways in which power can be seen to operate at the human-technological intersections. In Strange Days the technology of the SQUID ¾ a super quantum interference device that can record the full sensory stimulation evoked by any experience of the wearer ¾ is foregrounded in such a way that the social effects that assemble around it also become apparent. Central to the narrative of Strange Days are a series of conflicting territorialisations as the SQUID and the human characters connect together in multiple ways, forming various patterns of connection. As the narrative progresses, these human-technology connections are invested with meaning through the different contexts and power relationships.

The various patterns of connectivity that operate within Strange Days manifest themselves through the narratives of the human characters. Take Lenny Nero’s narrative. Originally conceived as a police technology for surveillance and the collection of evidence, the SQUID is utilised by Lenny Nero as a means of production. The clips he produces, the recordings of peoples’ activities, are his commodities. The SQUID can be seen to enable an economic practice with Lenny at the centre controlling the supply and hustling the demand. On the side of supply, the individuals who provide the clips are a mixture of genders and races; anyone who looks good enough and needs to make some money can be incorporated into the network. The side of demand is constituted by people with enough money to pay for both the playback technology and a supply of clips. Within Lenny’s worldview the clips, the packages of sensory experience, are simply part of an exchange system, valued not for what they may or may not mean, but solely for their financial worth.

The economic circuit put in place by Lenny is, however, only one of several possibilities for the relationship established between the human figures and the SQUID technology. Alternative narrative spaces employ alternative experiences of technologies. Filo, for instance, uses the technology as a means of surveillance, and as such the collected images do matter. Within Filo’s paranoiac circuit, the surveillance of his employees enables him to create an illusion of control over both his life and his business concerns ¾ the club and music scenes. The notion of the SQUID as a means of control is taken to further extremes within Strange Days; it is used as an instrument to ‘burn out’ the neural activities of Filo’s and Tic’s brains, an action which results in irreversible damage to their brains. The figure who uses the SQUID in this way, Max, is also the individual who rapes and murders Iris. Again the SQUID is implicated, not as a means of rape but as a means of control, in this case to control the reactions of the woman who is being raped. The SQUID is used to heighten her terror; force is used not only to control her body, but also her visual and sensory experiences as she is wired to see and feel her own rape and murder mediated through the feelings of the man who is raping and murdering her. If the implications of this sequence are not immediately obvious to the viewer, and they are almost too shocking to contemplate, it is explained and mediated for the audience through Lenny.

Through these various narrative devices, Strange Days presents a new technological sensory experience; however, this presentation exists in a tension with the limits contemporary technologies of the cinema. Within the story-world of Strange Days the SQUID, through superficial surface connections on the head, can record everything that the wearer sees and feels. This includes not only the visual but also the visceral, packaging together the pleasure of the voyeuristic look with the pain of experience. As a demonstration of the visual potential of the device, Strange Days opens with a long point-of-view shot of an armed burglary. In a sequence where people are constantly in motion, running through doors and short corridors, through a kitchen and up a staircase, the hand-held on the run camera, whip pans and final plummeting drop-off-the-edge shot, give the audience a taste of the visual exhilaration, but not the pain. The representation of pain can only be conventional, mediated through the reaction of a character on the screen. This tension continues through Strange Days; as the narrative depicts the downside of becoming addicted to SQUID playback, it also keeps showing playback, giving tantalising glimpses of a new media of simulation.

This tension between something new and something old, and the explicit constructedness of images is not only central to the narrative of Strange Days, recycled images are also an element in the construction of Strange Days itself, especially in the use of character and dialogue. The noir-ish Lenny is an ex-LAPD vice-cop who operates in the margins of the vice trade. His ex-girlfriend’s choice of partner is a career move, a prerogative of all the best femmes fatales. Max, Lenny’s duplicitous best friend, is the psycho bad-guy. The scenarios these characters perform within seem familiar, echoes of too many other films where the streets are dark, the city is LA, and the people re-use dialogue from old B-movies. Whilst Strange Days provokes a sense of having been here before, seen this before, there is also a drive towards something different through the exhilaration of the editing, the use of music and the explorations of light and dark. The rapid editing, combined with a moving camera, is especially evident in the near dark scenes in which Lenny drives to a meeting. On the streets it is no longer clear who are the lawless. People run in the dark, looting and carrying weapons, chasing and stopping, beating and being beaten in a social world beyond breaking point. Counterbalancing these scenes are sequences of long shots in deep focus, where conversations and arguments take place in low lit spaces, tonal depth provided by a predomination of reds and blues, and smoky air catches the intermittent beams of white light entering through cracks from the circling helicopters outside.

Strange Days balances banality with difference; familiar images are reset and pushed towards something different. Through the SQUID technology, information is similarly created and commodified, and as it is sold it accumulates new sets of meanings. But, such resettings always also carry the potential for the incipient loss of meaning. Experiences commodified through the SQUID become incorporated into the realm of simulation and information exchange. Once there, they are no longer located in relation to an originating act, they shed meanings and accrue others. In such a context, what happens to both history and politics?

This question of both politics and history emerges in Strange Days through one of the main thematic elements of the narrative, the conflict over a clip which records an event carrying significant political weight — the shooting by two white police officers of Jeriko-One, the African-American singer and political activist who is gaining leadership within his community. Mobilising SQUID technology, the clip is initially recorded because of Filo’s (Jeriko’s manager) paranoiac need to know the movements of all his associates. Once it exists, Filo attempts to control the information of Jeriko’s death by getting Max to erase all recordings of the event, preventing it from entering the cycle of information. However, Max has his own agenda and he sets in motion a chain of events which lead Lenny to think that Faith (Lenny’s ex-girlfriend) will be murdered, and since he is still in love with her, Lenny is desperate to prevent it. So, when Lenny finds the clip of the shooting it horrifies him, but he still sees it within a cycle of exchange value, only for its bargaining power in his game with Filo, and ultimately Max.

Mace Mason functions within the narrative of Strange Days to intercept and interrupt this potential chain of events, and to re-establish the political dimensions of the clip, thus preventing an emptying out of the image. Her actions reinforce the trace between the images and the event from which the recording originated. Her presence also invokes another set of connections mobilised through an intersection with the SQUID technology — the spectre of a riot. It is through Mace’s threat to leak the clip to the media that the fear of violence, which would erupt if such images were to become public knowledge, is articulated. But this articulation of the fear of the breakdown of law and order in LA is not the same for Mace as it is for Lenny. Mace’s relationship to the consequences of Jeriko’s death is explicitly constructed around her position as an African-American woman, and through her relationship to the African-American communities more generally. Through her, the consequences of Jeriko’s death are made to resonate not simply with the activities of Lenny, Max and Filo, but also with the histories of police violence against people of colour, and with histories of racial inequalities.

But these are not the only ways in which Mace’s difference is located within the text. It is also embedded in the ways in which Strange Days utilises sets of conventions associated with particular genres. The white characters, Max, Lenny, Faith and Filo, have roles with noir antecedents, and their interactions with each other are structured into the narrative through stories of the betrayal of friendship, and the betrayal of love. The conventions of Mace’s role, however, come from the action hero. As an action hero figure, Mace is almost infallible, and it is she who keeps Lenny at the centre of the story. Her actions "save his sorry ass" as he is betrayed by Max, betrayed by Faith, attacked by rogue police officers and beaten by Filo’s hench-persons. Mace is an uncompromised strong woman character, independent, reliable and responsible. Her characterisation is, however, more complex than either of these two points allow. She also has to be seen as an African-American woman, and as a single mother bringing up her son without any help from the boy’s father because he is in prison. Since noir, with few exceptions such as Devil in a Blue Dress, has been predominantly about a white experience of urban culture, in choosing to construct Mace’s character through a generic tradition which rarely uses noir conventions, the difference of her experiences as an African-American woman are not erased through the simple duality of good versus bad noir women.

Like many of the other characters, Mace’s position in the plot is also contingent on her relationship to the SQUID. Having initially refused to playback any "porno for wireheads," Mace’s inevitable entry into the world of playback has several consequences for the narrative of Strange Days. Whilst issues around black experience of urban LA resonate through Strange Days, much of the narrative remains concerned with white people. It shifts from the individual betrayals of white people, and the power that the white establishment controls, towards the threat of chaos caused by the potential of an inner city riot whose genesis will lie at the hands of two white police men. When Mace enters the playback loop, through a series of displacements she becomes responsible for preventing the catastrophe of a riot in a city already over-filled with people wanting to celebrate 2K. This is made explicit when Max asks her if she wants to be responsible for a riot by leaking the clip of Jeriko’s death to the media. Similarly, after persuading Lenny to give her the clip, it becomes her job to hand it over to the white establishment, personified in the white Chief of Police. Mace’s narrative function is then, a double act, and one that engenders a dislocation of culpability. When Mace enters the playback loop, and acquires knowledge through the SQUID, she problematically becomes the locus of responsibility for whether or not social disorder will occur, regardless of where such responsibilities might really lie.

In terms of the cultural processes upon which technologies are contingent, through the series of displacements outlined above, Mace also operates as a figure who can forge new connections around the intersections between humans and technologies. Initially in Strange Days, Mace refuses the possible intersections provided through the social and economic circuits of the hustle played out by Lenny, or the paranoia played out by Filo. Yet, even whilst she does not use it, she can never escape the presence of the technology, as it affects her through the social and economic formations which assemble around it. In finally entering into the playback loop, Mace puts into play another potential set of connections, ones which this time include not the personal dramas of Lenny, but a broader political context. In the resolution of Strange Days, the SQUID technology is central not only to the social, economic and cultural networks, but is also mobilised to find some form of justice, even if it is a problematic one.

In Strange Days, the connections created through the relationships between humans and technologies appear to reach some form of closure, one enforced through the resolution of the film. As the clip of Jeriko’s death is passed onto the police authorities, the circuit appears to close. Fresh Kill is another text that can be viewed through the perspective of the connections established between the humans and technologies, however, unlike Strange Days, it refuses a simple closure, keeping open the potential for on-going transformations and negotiations.

Fresh Kill is a distinctive video-feature. Visually striking, with a strong use of deep tones of red, green and blue, its range of references is broad ¾ from melodrama to minimalism; from cybertech to Borges; and from formalistic shots to commercial break-ins. The editing crosscuts between an array of different narrative events to create a complex and, at times, disorienting progression. Fresh Kill is passionate, humorous and, at times, cold. As the director, Shu Lea Cheang, describes it:

My interest in Fresh Kill arises from the ways in which the narrative elements discussed in the above quotation ¾ pollution, waste and dumping, the control of media technologies, and the characters ¾ are arranged in relation to one another. In keeping with the themes of this chapter, I will argue that Fresh Kill is organised around a series of distinct spatial groupings, with connections across these groupings established through the variety of media technologies used by the different characters within the text. In Fresh Kill, the making and unmaking of these connections involves a series of political strategies in relation to pollution; it is the means by which the opposing groups both come into conflict with one another, and resist the operations of one another.

These connections are established across the initially dislocated social spaces of Fresh Kill ¾ such spaces include the Naga Saki (a sushi bar), Los Gatos (a village on the Pacific Coast), Jiannbin’s home, Claire, Shareen and Honey’s home. Each of these spaces is distinct, but they also intersect with each other, enabling an expanded narrative space. For instance, Claire (who waits tables at the Naga Saki), Shareen and Honey (Claire’s daughter) form a family unit. This family is described in terms of the lesbian relationship between Claire and Shareen, and the domestic relationship between Claire, Shareen and Honey, as well as the location of where they live, and what they do for work and play. It is also described through a series of extensions beyond that discrete location to Mimi (Claire’s mother) and Clayton (Shareen’s father). These extensions enable another story about extended family relations. Claire, Shareen and Honey’s space is also expanded into the theme about pollution. Honey is contaminated by the gifts of Yamakazoo from Jiannbin, who works with Claire as the chef at Naga Saki. As Honey’s story acts to solidify the theme of pollution, it also expands the potential narrative spaces for the viewer to interact with imaginatively.

As a central theme of Fresh Kill, pollution features in different ways within the video ¾ the trash barge taking New York City’s waste ("17 tonnes a day") to the Staten Island landfill site known as Fresh Kill; a barge of toxic chemical waste seeking a docking site in Africa; disintegrating H-bombs in the ocean; illegal dumping of radioactive waste in the Pacific fishing waters off the US coast. Less toxically, Shareen’s work is based around clearance and redistribution of people’s excess furniture and televisions. The issue of pollution, as well as being an event within Fresh Kill, creates a linking device between the different groups of the film — Claire, Shareen and Honey; Jiannbin and Miguel; Mimi; the African Unity Network; GX; Stuart Sterling. As I have already suggested, each of these groups occupies a distinct narrative location, and in some cases a separate physical space. However, the activities of these groups come together to create a site of action within the narrative. This space is not one constituted by the practices of people within a particular location; rather, its existence is constituted and mediated by moments of connectivity across the locations through technologies such as the Internet, radio, and television.

In Fresh Kill one such complex site operates around the market place. Although never visible within the text, the market place is primarily constituted through representative figures from two distinct groupings. Roger Bailey, the director of the transnational company GX, represents the first grouping. GX is depicted within Fresh Kill through a series of montage sequences that indicate the extent of its influence. The company is involved in nuclear power production, media news production, telecommunications, pet food and breakfast cereals. These montage sequences also operate as advert break-ins within the narrative, examples of media technologies being mobilised to mediate GX’s message to the public within the storyworld of Fresh Kill. The economic effectiveness of this media campaign can be gauged through a second group of characters associated with Stuart Sterling, an aptly named stock trader first encountered in the Naga Saki. As dealers and traders on the stock market who talk about nothing but share prices, they act as indices for the success of GX. The intersections of these two groups provide one of the dimensions of the space in question in this discussion; if GX is successful in its market operations then Sterling will tell his friends to buy their shares. Taken together the GX/Sterling interconnection displays the profit-making orientation of the marketplace.

The complex connections which establish relationships between social practices and technologies are evident in other ways within Fresh Kill. Taking as an example the American Communication Corporation (ACC), when the news-casting corporation first appears within Fresh Kill it presents a series of stories questioning the problem of pollution. These include a rotting H-bomb off the coast of Japan, serious pollution of fishing waters off the coast of California, and a barge of toxic waste seeking a port off the coast of Africa. The interweaving of these newscasts into the story-world of Fresh Kill implicitly attach the different acts of pollution to one another, forming connections between global pollution and the more local pollution on Staten Island. Each circumstance of pollution is initially isolated, but when mobilised by different characters and connected by the media technologies, a larger political space is created. Once ACC is acquired by GX, an event that alters the territorialisation of ACC, there ensues a new alignment across the spatial organisation of groups and technologies. ACC’s broadcasts are, through their association with GX, re-oriented towards the power field of the economic interests of GX. A counterpoint to the mainstream news-casting corporation is public access television. Mimi Mayakovsky, Claire’s mother, runs the program Yours Truly Mimi which solicits calls from the public, providing yet another site of technological interaction. At the outset of the video feature, the concerns about pollution expressed in Mimi’s program are local ones around the Staten Island landfill site. They expand to include the question of Los Gatos (the village affected by offshore pollution), once that contamination begins to impinge on the lives of the people in Manhattan and Staten Island through the poisoned fish. The contingency of this dimension of space is made clear when Mimi’s programme is taken off-air. Again, the controlling power of GX is exerted in an attempt to orient the dimensions towards their perspective, a resistance against the activist groups that question their authority.

The Internet also features as a technology in Fresh Kill, though it is less prevalent than television. Jiannbin Lui possesses a computer system that gives him access to the Internet. A hacker, his skills are displayed when he breaks into an on-line shopping site. These skills are later deployed when Jiannbin hacks into GX’s system and steals information from their "Central Data" store. In addition to the interaction between Jiannbin and GX over the Internet, a global connection is created through the deployment of this technology in the form of messages from the African Unity Network (A.U.N.). The A.U.N. creates another dimension in the space around pollution as it sends activist messages around the global communication networks concerning the dumping of waste in Africa by Western countries. Not only do the A.U.N. make use of the Internet but they also deploy satellite technology when they break into the transmission of newscasts from ACC.

The media technologies in Fresh Kill are, then, put into motion by each of the dimensions of the virtual nexus that assembles in the interplay of resistances. By resistances here, I do not simply mean the more conventionally understood opposition between a dominant and subversive position; rather, resistance is used to mean the countering movements made by any grouping. Such movements are a part of the spatial organisation of relationships between social practises and technoscience, never simply progressive or repressive, they are an interplay or negotiation between the two. Resistance does not simply mean a radical form of action against a dominating force (whether that be economic, military, textual, cultural, political); rather, resistance is an opposition, something which can be radical, but can equally be reactionary. This definition implies an on-goingness in which movements of resistance are unstable and dynamic, and in process. From such a perspective, the media technologies are not simply allied to either an oppressive dimension or one that seeks to resist such oppression; they can be mobilised by all groups. To a certain extent, these media technologies function in a similar way to a cyborg; they can be understood as mediating the relationships between individuals/groups, in the sense that they do not simply operate as a vehicle with which to deliver a message, but become a constituent feature of how that message is conceived and delivered. This notion of cyborg draws on Donna Haraway’s influential essay ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs.’ Haraway states:

This reading of Fresh Kill, through its attempts to articulate the multi-dimensional relationship between humans and technologies, moves beyond a simple set of dualisms. In doing so, it touches on an aspect of the cyborg which is sometimes overlooked in the theoretical gestures towards the cyborg as site of political renewal. That is, the cyborg is open to appropriation by anyone who has the means (financial, technological or imaginative), whatever their alignment with radical or conservative positions. Like the technologies of Fresh Kill, the cyborg has the potential to be constructive, instructive and/or destructive.

The technologies of telecommunications and the Internet seen in Fresh Kill can be understood as giving substance to a site of action, a site where the expansionist designs of transglobal corporations such as GX can be intersected with the work of oppositional group(s). In themselves, these groups do not cause the space of negotiation; however, with the additional components of technology, a virtual space is created as the humans and technologies operate together. Technology is not simply a medium by which a message is delivered; it makes possible the negotiation. Each of these negotiations is, however, limited by its intersection with other dimensions, which may be economic, political, exploitative, or regenerative. Technologically enhanced resistances, when spatialised in this way, reveal their contingencies. Actions cease to be events that gain meanings from a single site (groups or individuals), instead they are only components in a complex and on-going negotiation.

Gremlins, Gremlins 2, Strange Days and Fresh Kill explore the relationships established between humans and technologies. They can be read as texts which refuse simple dualisms, and instead envision patterns of connections and reconnections. However, Gremlins, Gremlins 2 and Strange Days are limited in the extent to which they establish patterns of re-connection. Their drive towards a resolution restricts the potential for openness which the patterns of connection across the narrative might suggest. In contrast, in Fresh Kill the space of negotiation remains a shifting one. The processes of territorialisation give an account of the inclusions and exclusions that make up the construction of a space, but this spatialisation remains contingent. The anti-pollution grouping may damage GX, however, this is only a momentary effect. The on-goingness of the processes at play can be seen through Stuart Sterling. He begins the narrative associated with the economic benefits derived from the market strategies of GX, and ends the film associated with the economic benefits derived from the green economy. In Fresh Kill a cynical view is taken of this transition, and Sterling is presented as exploiting the green economy, as much as he had exploited the stockmarket. Initially a part of the GX dimension of the spatial organisation of the virtual nexus, he shifts territories, or his shift in orientation territorialises another dimension, one that is constituted by the components of the green economy. Since one of Stuart Sterling’s primary functions is defined through his successful financial activities, there is in the end, little difference between the green economy and the stockmarket. As Sterling says: "The Earth’s worth saving, but there’s no excuse for not making a profit". Fresh Kill, then, constructs sets of relationships that are always shifting, constantly making and re-making connections across which boundaries of power and control intersect. The film provides no heroes, only small changes.