The Science Fiction Memory Film
The Science Fiction Memory Film

Summary/Abstract: Science fiction cinema places paramount importance on questions of time and temporality, particularly those concerning the manipulation of memory. I propose the term “science fiction memory film” by examining several commercially successful science fiction films, mostly from the 2000s and 2010s. These films’ plots involve a fictional scenario about monitoring, commodifying, and digitally altering human memories. They foreground the prominence of technological advancements as well as relationships of contact or collision between human and digital memory. In these films, the specific mode of addressing memory and the lived past can be observed on the level of both subject matter and narration. By analyzing exemplary themes and approaches, I suggest that this type of science fiction films reflect cultural anxieties and desires in the present age of ubiquitous computing. Finally, I connect the films in question to the concept of societies of control, developed by Gilles Deleuze and further elaborated by a number of contemporary theorists.

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