Precarity, parenthood and play in Jennifer Phang’s Advantageous

Miller, T.S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.3828/sfftv.2018.15

Miller, T.S.

Science Fiction Film & Television (2019), 11, (2), 1–25.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/sfftv.2018.15
Language: English
Pages: 25

Abstract

A distinctly feminist and distinctly Asian-American response to the Blade Runner tradition in sf cinema, Jennifer Phang’s 2015 film Advantageous juxtaposes an ages-old narrative of maternal sacrifice with the futuristic premise of a consciousness-transfer procedure. The film imagines a techno-capitalist dystopia in which early 21st-century forebodings about the acceleration of income inequality, economic precarity among skilled professionals and the potential abolition of human labour have only intensified. Phang invites us to find a quiet but radical hope in both new forms of kinship and non-competitive play, forces that may counter the dehumanisation and, indeed, despair depicted as accompanying the technological supplantation of the human body as both economic engine and autonomous moral agent.

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