Fang Wenbo
UID: 3035789253
In the tutorial, we discuss the interesting future city in the reading. I want to share my view on the class, but time is so limited. I wasn’t able to share my point.
About those sci-fi cities in the reading, I think the one on page 366 “city in train’ is very interesting. Although it seems unrealistic at first glance, It is astonishingly similar to our real world. The train city protects people from the terrible weather outside, just like the city that we live in protecting us from the wild environment. It provides us more resources that are easier to get.
And also It said that poor people live in the rear cars, pretty officials fill the middle cars, and the indulgent elite lives in exotic comfort close to the engine. I think this scene is very common in many cities, like in the capital city of India New Delhi, the slum is just across the street from the rich quarter. So, the movie used this kind of symbolic approach to showing a spirit of resistance against class solidification.
Imaginations of cyber cities are created by people in the physical world, thus ideas are stemmed from real cities. When an audience watches cyberpunk film in dark, they might be, as Roland Barthes said, be hypnotized and attracted to the story. Yet, after we come out to the broad daylight, we might eventually think that the films actually resemble real-life situations and have a critical reflection about them.