Cosmos and Camus. Shai Tubali
nature of human existence within the empty cosmic vastness, so the absurd negatively emphasizes and reinforces the walls that surround man, only to draw strength from these walls (MS, 58). The enclosing walls are the source of the absurdist enlightenment.
A long list of science fiction films weave their philosophical tension around the human longing to know and to unite and the limit of the cosmic silence.11 It seems that such films send humans off on dumbfounding journeys through outer space to test the friction between alienation and unity. Humans are often left hovering in an infinitely vacant universe, forced to come to terms with their insatiable longing. The astonishing beauty of the cosmic landscape is at once “inhuman” and “remote.”12 Ironically, the broadened context aggravates the sense of limitation, the fundamental experience Buber (2004: 157) described as being “homeless in infinity.” The scale of the unfolding cosmos intensifies human smallness and, with it, the absurdist pathos.
It is important to recognize that science fiction film is the folklore of an era and also, for the most part, a mythology narrated by one specific civilization. It usurps whatever point in space it reaches and lands on in order to establish “Western epistemology and metaphysics” (Sardar 2002: 12).13 Its imagined futures carry with them the complexes of the modern mind, including the psychological complexes evoked by its science and technology. Sagi (2002: 12) asserts that the experience of the absurd, as captured by Camus, is a “symptom of modern life” rather than an inherent attribute of human existence – indeed, it is the outcome of the Copernican revolution, which robbed humans of the feeling that the universe could be their home. Hemmed in by the unlimited on every side, humans were forced ←11 | 12→into the discovery that they were different from the rest of creation. Thus, the absurd came into being – or, at least, intensified – with the emergence of the highly subjective, individual self-consciousness (ibid., 8). Later scientific breakthroughs, which on the surface seemed to get us closer to the mystery of the universe – such as the growing cosmological awareness of its immeasurable magnitude – have only further illustrated the randomness of the appearance of an isolated and bewildered self-reflective awareness on one floating planet in the midst of expanses without horizons.
It is for this reason that visions of the future in science fiction film are accompanied by a sense of disconcerting estrangement. The highly advanced yet cold-hearted technology, gloomy spaceships gliding into the coolness of cosmic space, unfathomable black holes, and the strange appearances of the “others” all serve as effective magnifiers of the experience of the absurd. Wherever humans travel, be it “down here” or “out there,” the absurd awaits them patiently, ready to toss them back onto themselves. As I will suggest later, it may be more accurate to state that we take our alienation with us: an embodied self-awareness that hits against the walls of its longing in whatever corner of the universe it finds itself in.14
It is therefore reasonable to seek new layers of insight into the experience of the absurd by utilizing a filmic genre that has constructed the ideal setting for it: The tangible limits that are created by placing humans in relation to extra-human elements force men and women to turn their gaze to the mirror of the absurd and to consciously choose concrete ways of facing this inescapable fate. The reality of the absurd, which in daily life may only be fleetingly experienced, pressing in on one gently, becomes acute and undeniable in light of such sharp contrasts. But before we delve into examples of the subgenre of nonhumans, we must first gain a deeper understanding of the concept and the experience of limits and the many different expressions of limits in Camus’ philosophy.
The book’s first part – “Camus’ absurd: Consciousness and limits” – aims to introduce the main components of Camus’ absurdity in such a ←12 | 13→way that it can be easily applied to the analysis of the films later. Since Camus himself ascribed to the novel, and to art in general, greater capacities to capture the “feeling of the absurd,” I ground my elucidation of absurdity in my analysis of The Stranger and Caligula, thus establishing the arts, and consequently film, as a more immediate way of approaching the absurdity of the human condition. In Chapter 1, I demonstrate the way The Stranger silently and metaphorically thrusts us into the territory of the absurd, revealing that the principle that limits not only define human nature, but also hold a surprising redemptive power is at the heart of the absurd. Chapter 2 explores the concept of the absurd, more coherently presented in The Myth of Sisyphus, as a collision between human consciousness and five untraversable limits – separation, knowing, meaning, death, and repetition. I argue that the source of absurdity is the very existence of a self-transcendent, observing consciousness, and that since it is consciousness itself that produces absurdity, it will take absurdity with it to any imaginable universe or future. In Chapter 3, drawing on The Myth and The Rebel, I turn to the consequences of awakening to the feeling of absurdity and the ways in which one could or should live in the light of this feeling. I consider the variety of possible responses proposed by Camus to this recognition of the absurdity of the human condition: from the five negative responses of suicide, murder, nihilism, hope, and renunciation, to the five positive responses of acceptance, revolt, freedom, passion, and human solidarity.
Equipped with these Camusean essentials, I delve, in the second part – “Science fiction films: Absurd at the edge of the cosmos” – into an in-depth analysis of four science fiction films (the rationale for the selection of these four films will be addressed in the concluding chapter). Chapter 4 analyzes, side by side, two first-contact films – Robert Zemeckis’ Contact (1997) and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) – to test the validity of Camus’ metaphysics in a universe where human estrangement seems to be disrupted by cosmic visitors. Similarly, Chapter 5 analyzes, side by side, Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) and Spike Jonze’s Her (2013). Whereas the sudden descent of Contact’s and Arrival’s aliens is experienced as the appearance of the ultimate other who mirrors our relationship with a silent universe, it is the disturbing closeness of these A.I. forms to the ←13 | 14→human experience that starkly reflects the absurd tensions of the human experience and potential responses to these. Lastly, in Chapter 6, I bring together the conclusions of all four films to derive from them more general insights in the light of Camus’ absurdity. I confirm the argument put forward in Part I that absurdity is, first and foremost, a collision within ourselves, and therefore, a friction that should also be expected to afflict us at the edge of the universe, in a far-off future. Furthermore, I show that these analyses yield more than an insightful reflection of the absurd in science fiction film. Indeed, imaginative collisions with nonhumans seem to tell us a lot about the nature of the absurd in the human condition, as well as raising the question of whether absurdity is exclusively a human matter. Ultimately, my interpretation of the films illuminates the films themselves just as much as it illuminates, challenges, and expands Camus’ concept of absurdity, thus contributing to our current understanding of what the absurd reality is and how we can either live with it or transcend it.
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1 This is not an accepted classification in film studies. Based on the Science Fiction Handbook (Booker and Thomas 2009), it could be thought of as a synthesis of two subgenres: the alien invasion narrative and cyberpunk and posthuman science fiction. For the purposes of my analysis, this subgenre includes science fiction films involving an encounter with an apparently competitive, self-conscious “other”: clones, artificial intelligence, androids, humanoids, aliens, and so forth.
2 Sorfa (2016: 3) supports this argument, suggesting that at least some films are capable of doing philosophy – “in a way that is unique to the medium,” of course.