ETHICAL ISSUES IN CINEMATIC DYSTOPIAS: PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRIES INTO MEDIA REPRESENTATION IN FILM

Abstract

This thesis examines the uptick in cinematic dystopias, particularly within the nexus of the cinematic medium, by looking into the propensities of such narratives in visualizing the unimaginable, and the effects of espousing its rhetoric through various discourses on class, race, and gender. This thesis examines cinematic dystopias like that of The Hunger Games Trilogy and The Purge Series, in so doing aiming at an analysis on the presence of the simulacra, particularly the ones through the pens of Baudrillard and Deleuze. By tapping into various domains of the Baudrillardian and Deleuzian simulacra, I argue that cinematic dystopias assume the role of the simulacra in engineering an ostensibly neutral way in which we have come to see and experience them. These representations in cinematic dystopias, as I argue, are never neutral, which in turn call for a need to reexamine the ways we should come to see and appropriate them. Considering that the simulacra in cinematic dystopias have an effect on notions of reality sense-making, I analyze the cinematic dystopias on such terms, commenting on misplaced issues of class, race and gender. As such, this thesis proposes the need for an ethical reading of representation by looking into, mainly, the literature centers of Levinas, Cavell, and Deleuze, in order to situate a possible ethical premise for dystopian film and its representation. I conclude that while cinematic dystopias has engineered an experience for viewers to be interpellated by them to explore or imagine society’s present problems, the commentaries on issues of class, race, and gender underscore the pervasiveness of cinematic dystopia in fostering our imagination in their respective domains, and to question the validity of these commentaries would remain key to understanding the functions of cinema. It is in this pursuit that I argue the need to synthesize an ethical claim of these representations in order to illuminate the pervasiveness of the medium’s rhetoric and consider the effects of such exposures and alternative understanding toward cinematic dystopias.