Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Humanities and Cultural Studies

Major Professor

Benjamin Goldberg, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Todd Jurgess, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Andrew Berish, Ph.D.

Keywords

Cinematic Environment, Dystopian Cinema, Edmund Burke, New Hollywood Blockbuster, Romanticism, Worldbuilding, Sublimity

Abstract

Blockbuster dystopian sci-fi features stories of environmental collapse, authoritarian governments, out of control corporations, unbounded consumerism, and other awful possibilities. Scholars of science fiction broadly agree that this genre explores collective fears, anxieties, and speculations about the present and future. At the same time, film scholars have established that dystopian sci-fi cinema is compelling, and audiences respond to their effects-driven visuals, photorealistic mise-en-scene, and dramatic narratives. This creates an apparent paradox: Blockbuster cinematic aesthetics portray undesirable worlds desirably. I resolve this paradox by arguing that the worldbuilding of spectacle-driven, dystopian sci-fi cinema is Romanticized. That is, the provocative style of Blockbuster dystopian cinema draws upon artistic styles and tropes discussed by nineteenth century Romantic philosophers.

Films in this mode—specifically Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 film Blade Runner 2049 and its 1982 predecessor—depict monolithic, grandiose, and awful sci-fi environments. These movies aesthetically incite pleasure and displeasure in a way that can be usefully interpreted through the philosophies of sublimity discussed by Edmund Burke. Both philosophers discussed how repellant environments, visuals, and sounds connote positive experiences at a distance. I affirm—if the well-established phenomenological conversations about the sublime in film scholarship are true—that Blockbuster dystopian sci-fi draws upon this unexpected literary history, collectively (1) resolving the paradox of the appeal of dystopian cinema, (2) expanding our analytical toolkit for understanding the construction of dystopian and sci-fi filmmaking, and (3) linking the post-Enlightenment industrial criticisms of Romanticism (urbanization, capitalism, and nostalgia) to contemporary postmodern ecological and social devastations.

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