Tecnologia, cinema e a invenção do corpo contemporâneo : do corpo mecânico ao corpo digital

Abstract

The object of this dissertation is the trajectory of the human body, in western societies, in some narratives built in the beginning of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century, and its change from a mechanical concept the body tied to the machines of industrial society to its digital format the body transformed into synthetic images in the cinema. The main objective is identifying transformations in the processes of production, circulation and consumption of a certain body model, based on the hollywoodian cinematographic discourse, which generated differentiated practices in the formation of this model, that we will call perfect body . The study was developed by means of an analysis of the movie S1m0ne, released in 2002, by the producer, director and scriptwriter Andrew Niccol who, in the movie, makes use of the New Communication Technologies (NCT) in order to build the perfect body of a movie actress. It is the construction of this perfect body that will be studied, in so far as this body presents itself as digital and makes use of imagetic techniques in order to be formatted. After mapping some of the characteristics of the body, in the period which contemplates post-Industrial Revolution modernity to contemporaneity, we analyze the passing of power technologies in the western society, departing from the hypothesis according to which at least two body models, which we will call machine-body and bio-body, and their respective discourses, were developed, originating the present model proposed by the hollywoodian filmic image: the perfect body , equivalent to the digital body, the bit-body. The discussions presented are based on the theoretical works of the philosopher Michel Foucault, who studied the history of sexuality and the body, introducing various themes into an archeology of knowledge and a genealogy of powers in modern and contemporary societies, besides authors who are in tune with the comprehension of the Cinema as an influent means of communication in the organization of thoughts and culture and, specially, in the formation of subjectivity.