Time Travel and Our Culture of Technology
Primary Blog Question
When compared, the two film clips help illuminate a key question for this course: How has our relationship to technology changed over time?
Secondary Blog Questions
How has film technology changed?
How have we changed as film viewers?
How has our understanding of time evolved?
How does fiction/science fiction impact our relationship to technology?
What struck me most about the two versions of The Time Machine we watched was the underlying cultural and philosophical assumptions about progress and technology. In Pal's 1960 film, technology and time travel were a mysterious frontier for exploration. This is made evident in the long explication of time as the fourth dimension. This philosophical understanding of advances in technology make sense in the post-WWII era when populations have moved from the awful and destructive nature of technology to envisioning possibilities for the future. In Wells' 2002 film, time travel is something to be used for personal means, namely to save a loved one from a tragic accident. This film exemplifies a culture that has adopted technology as individual expression. Tech is no longer an unexplored landscape on the cusp of discovery, but a personal tool to be used for any means that seem desirable to us. Each version of The Time Machine provides a window to the time and culture of its filmgoers, using narrative and science fiction to reflect who we are and who we want to become.
