Teaching History with Science Fiction Films by Van Riper A. Bowdoin;

Author:Van Riper, A. Bowdoin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion: The New World Order, 1990–Present

Science fiction’s visions of the future are, by their nature, constantly rendered obsolete (or reduced to historical curiosities) as history catches up with them. Even as old dreams and nightmares are foreclosed, however, a parallel process creates new ones. Technological, political, and sociocultural shifts inspire new plots, bring to light new themes, and suggest new settings. The technology-enabled globalization of the world economy and the post–Cold War destabilization of significant portions of Africa and the Middle East have, for example, set the stage for a wave of turn-of-the-millennium science fiction films dealing with refugees (District 9 [2009]), water wars (Mad Max: Fury Road [2015]), transnational labor issues (Sleep Dealer [2008]), and resource exhaustion (Wall-E [2008]). The growing gulf between the global rich and the global poor—echoes of Metropolis, but a topic little attended to in intervening decades—has become the subject of its own thriving subgenre, in films such as In Time (2011), Elysium (2013), After Earth (2013), and Oblivion (2013).

The handling of the post–Cold War era in world history classrooms varies (and will, for the foreseeable future, likely continue to vary) widely from classroom to classroom. There are, it sometimes seems, as many approaches as there are instructors. Welcome and exciting as that variety is, it leaves the pedagogical value of individual turn-of-the-millennium science fiction films a matter for individual instructors to explore. Regardless of which post-2000 films (if any) prove useful in particular world history surveys, however, the sheer volume of such films—and the number of them that tell transnational or global stories—is worthy of note. Nearly fifty years after the crew of Apollo 8 sent back the first images of Earth as a borderless, blue-and-white oasis in the blackness of space, science fiction films have begun to catch up with science.

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