X2: X-Men United

X2: X-Men United

Prompt12

I think the Videodrome is the high technology which affects body in violent ways. The movie Videodrome is filled with violence. This is especially represented by showing death. There are a lot of deaths in the whole movie. Every death is related to the technology; Videodrome. Death is a huge change in the body. This movie shows the death in violent and disgusting ways. Convex programmed Max’s body by using videodrome. He put the tape inside of Max’s body by force. (This is disgusting scene.) Then, Max became assassin of the Videodrome. He killed his partners but fail to kill Bianca. Bianca removed the tape and programmed again to kill people related to videodrome. So Max killed Convex and Herlon. This is the main scene which is described as violent and disgusting death. Their body is changed in horrible and disgusting ways. It is too disgusting that almost everyone wouldn’t enjoy these scenes. According to this point, I think director exposed his intention about the movie. He is looking this movie in negative way. He made viewer to feel themselves about this idea. The argument is that this technology is too much that it can affect the body in negative way. It blows serious attention to viewers about the technology and the body. They would not want this things happens in the real world. Thus, I think this movie uses effective way to support the argument. The argument gets more obviously when showing the violence and negative affect about the body.

prompt 11

The main characters of X2 are the mutants. Due to high technology, there are many mutants in the world. Unlike humans, these mutants have special powers. The first mutant we can see in the movie is Nightcrawler, who has the ability to teleport. There are several other mutants who are X-men; Wolverine, Jean, Storm etc. They all have extraordinary powers which help them fight against the anti-mutant human, Stryker. Stryker injects drugs to mutants to control them by using Professor X’s ability. I think there are two arguments related with the body in this movie. First, high technology empowers the mutants’ bodies with extraordinary power and this is directly related to violence. The movie focuses on these X-men’s powers. It shows their special ability by using many cinematic languages. The focus of almost every scene is related to their power, such as the three blades from Wolverine’s hands, the ice for Bobby(Iceman) and fire for Pyro. They use this power to fight with Stryker and human military. This make their power directly related to violence. The second argument is that the body can be controlled by someone else. Stryker uses drugs or his son to control the mutants’ body. The light of the movie also supports this argument. It’s almost dark when they fight with their power. Then, it gets brighter when the movie is approaching to the peaceful end. The background is interesting as well. Alkali Lake is where Stryker tried to kill the mutants. Inside of his building, it’s dark and filled with violence. However, the outside of the building is beautiful nature. This means that outside of violence is peaceful. This contrast makes the violence more strong which also make the arguments more strong.

Prompt 10

I have several interesting topics in Neromancer that I want to talk about. First one is about agency. Armitage’s team, which include Case, Molly, Peter ….,  can be agency. They work as a team. Wintermute uses them to work for him because he doesn’t have physical body. This team can be considered as Wintermute’s body since they work for his body.

Freedom is also interesting part in this book. In this real world, where we are living now, it’s hard to imagine without the body. We barely have freedom about our body. In Neromancer, however, people could have freedom about the body. Case is the most predominant character who experienced freedom from his body. He connects to cyberspace where he can be apart from his meat. He can’t go certain place – which is not real – but he can see, talk and even feel!! All of these things are not related to his real body.

The next thing I want to talk about is death. There are a lot of character who are involved in death. For example, Dixie is dead person. But he is alive in cyberspace. Case is working (maybe just using) with him. Same as Linda. She is already dead in Chiba, but Case met her in the beach ( which is not real beach, cyberspace ). These facts can say that death is just related to body. In cyberspace, everyone is without the body. So death doesn’t affect anything to them. I think this is really interesting part. There’s one more interesting part about death what I want to mention about. It’s about Peter. Molly poisoned him. So he is almost dead. But Neromancer is using his eyes. Peter can be alive only if Neromancer keep his eyes. This means that if one part of your body is alive in other person, you are not died yet. This definition is really new for us. This whole thing can be new body modification related to high technologies.