Darwin’s Monsters: Evolution, Science, and the Gothic in Christian Alvart’s ”Pandorum”

Katarzyna Pisarska

Abstract


This article analyses Gothic tropes in the science fiction film Pandorum (2009, dir. Christian Alvart), through the lens of such concepts as evolution and science, which are presented in the film as inherently monstrous. Key to the analysis is the notion of the return of the repressed (or abjected) past which invades the future, disrupting biological, social, and moral borders of the human. This Gothic return, facilitated by advanced science and technology, turns the future into a site of humanity’s confrontation with their animal instincts, highlighting the fragility of our civilisation and proving our subjection to evolutionary processes.


Keywords


Gothic, Darwinism, evolution, science, monstrosity

Full Text:

PDF

References


Andriano, J. D. (1999). Immortal Monster: The Mythological Evolution of the Fantastic Beast in Modern Fiction and Film. Westport: Greenwood Press.

Barlow, N. (Ed). (1958). The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882. London: Collins.

Botting, F. (1995). Gothic. London: Routledge.

Botting, F. (2002). Aftergothic: consumption, machines, and black holes. In J. Hogle (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction (pp. 277-300). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL0521791243.014.

Botting, F. (2005). ‘Monsters of the Imagination’: Gothic, Science, Fiction. In D. Seed (Ed.), A Companion to Science Fiction (pp. 95-126). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. DOI:10.1002/9780470997055.ch8.

Browne, J. (2006). Darwin’s The Origin of Species: A Biography. London: Atlantic Books.

Creed, B. (1994). The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.

Hurley, K. (2004). The Gothic Body: Sexuality, materialism, and degeneration at the fin de siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kulzer, R., Bolt, J. & Anderson, W. S. (Producers), & Alvart, C. (Director). (2009). Pandorum. [Motion Picture]. Germany: Constanin Film.

MacArthur, S. (2015). Gothic Science Fiction: 1818 to the Present. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: 057/9781137389275.

Malthus, T. R. (1958). An Essay on Population, Vol. 1. London: J. M. Dent & Sons.

Sharon, T. (2014). Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology: The Case for Mediated Posthumanism. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: 978-94-007-7554-1.

Wasson, S., & Alder E. (2011). Introduction. In S. Wasson, & E. Alder (Eds.), Gothic Science Fiction 1980-2010 (pp. 1-18). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. DOI: 10.1215/9780822394167-001.

West, R. (2007). Abject Cannibalism: Anthropophagic Poetics in Conrad, White, and Tennant – Towards a Critique of Julia Kristeva’s Theory of Abjection. In K. Kutzbach, & M. Mueller (Eds.), The Abject of Desire: The Aestheticization of the Unaesthetic in Contemporary Literature and Culture (pp. 235-254). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Wilson, A. N. (1999). God’s Funeral: A Biography of Faith and Doubt in Western Civilization. New York: Ballantine Books.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2019.43.2.157-166
Date of publication: 2019-07-03 11:00:45
Date of submission: 2018-07-15 20:27:33


Statistics


Total abstract view - 1151
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 466

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2019 Katarzyna Pisarska

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.