Blog Post #2: Show and Tell- Stephanie Clinch

For my show and tell, I showed a clip from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and a trailer for a French film called Reality+. These movies seemed pertinent to what we had been learning about human reproductions and its effects on the world. Furthermore, these examples show two different scenarios that could potentially arise in the future; These futures from the past tell us about the time that these films were made and about society and what its expectations for the future might have been. They also tell us about how technologically advanced society was at the time. The idea of using technology to replace humans and how it crosses into human boundaries is an area of speculation as we advance technologically.  

In the clip from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie’s father was let go from a job at a factory after rises in toothpaste sales called for machines to replace humans. Machines that can take the place of humans has been an issue in the past few decades, as it is proven that machines can do certain human jobs more efficiently. This scenario could be an indication of how society felt at the time and their fear of machines completely replacing humans and leaving everyone impoverished and obsolete. This clip provides a potential pathway that the future could follow in regards to how technology could be used.

The other clip, the trailer from the movie Reality+, shows a different scenario. In Reality+, a man goes to a company where they install a chip in the back of his neck so that he may join a virtual community where people have enhanced their appearances. The people in this community have twelve hours to equip their “plus” appearance, but they must rest their brains for the other twelve hours of the day. This proves to cause many problems as people struggle to plan around others’ twelve hours of activation. Furthermore, some people choose to hack into their systems so that they can operate with their plus appearance 24/7—which ultimately results to be harmful for their brains. There is also an underlying problem—people are using technology to replace aspects that they do not like about themselves with illusions that disappear after twelve hours instead of embracing their flaws, resulting in psychologic problems. This idea of using technology to enhance the human body is complex in that, it does not replace humans, but in a way it does. The human body is still intact, but it is arguable that the aura is not the same because humans are meant to be flawed (and perceived as such) and this use of technology erases (or at least masks) that part of humanity, creating a human-android-hybrid illusion.

There are two very different presentations of the future in both films. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory shows humans being completely replaced by machines, minimizing the need for human employees. In Reality+, humans are not completely replaced, but their flaws are, questionably replacing their human auras with fabricated confidence and appearances. These theories are interesting depictions of the future that shed some light on the possibilities and results that advancing technologically might bring.