SF 영화 속 생명정치와 안드로이드의 문제설정 : 리들리 스콧 영화를 중심으로

Abstract

In 1979, director Ridley Scott initiated an extensive creation myth involving androids and monsters through genetic biotechnology with his film Alien. In 1982, he directed Blade Runner, a film that engendered numerous debates and discourses on the identity and ontology of androids, referred to as replicants. This raises the question. How does the imagination in science fiction films depicting dystopian fears of technology and capital correspond with real-world foundations (political, social, economic, cultural)? The contemporary computer culture, the apparatuses and power structures of the late capitalist system, and the cinematic products materialized through our imagination, particularly the representations of future societies in science fiction films, function as mediators of present-day desires and anxieties. This dynamic is especially evident in the characters and narrative structures encompassing cyborgs, androids, artificial intelligence, and post-human entities, as depicted in SF cinema. Above all, the politics constructed through androids can be understood as a locus where Michel Foucault's two fundamental forms of life governance—the disciplining of the individual body and the regulatory control of the population—are doubly articulated. This locus further enables the application and analysis of Giorgio Agamben's concept of the apparatus (dispositif), which reconfigures Foucault's notion of biopolitics. This study aims to explore how Michel Foucault's and Giorgio Agamben's theoretical discussions on biopolitics—particularly the concepts of ‘the right of death,’ ‘racism,’ and ‘homo sacer’—are inscribed onto the androids depicted in Ridley Scott's films. Specifically, this study will address two central issues: first, the mechanisms of biopolitics manifested in the bodies of androids within Ridley Scott's science fiction and second, a critical assessment of whether the android politics portrayed in Scott's films exhibit potentialities for resistance.