Desktop Film as an Artistic Reflection of Posthuman Ideas
The article presents an overview of the desktop film genre and attempts to find its philosophical foundations in the concept of posthumanism. Desktop film is seen as a reflection of posthuman ideas. Specifically, it discusses the new corporeality of the posthuman person. The theoretical ideas of the new corporeality are supported by the analysis of its examples taken from the movie “Anon” by Andrew Niccol (2018). In this film, two types of the new posthuman corporeality are shown. The first is that of a cyborg and implies a human body equipped with technological enhancements and extensions. The second is the symbolic digital body made of data and stored in virtual databases - this digital body becomes a person’s “digital double”. In desktop films, these types of new posthuman corporeality intersect on the screen. Desktop films are the type of movies where the action takes place primarily on computer or mobile phone screens. Characters of desktop films tend to merge with their screens, both literally and metaphorically. The characters’ physical human bodies gradually form tight bonds with the screens. At the same time, screen devices help to create, display and contain the digital data body of the characters. Thus, the desktop film genre could potentially be regarded as contemporary culture’s response to the changing relationship between people and technology in the modern world. In particular, this genre demonstrates a tendency towards more symbiotic connections and relations between people and their screen devices. The analysis of the film, produced in the “posthuman panic cinema” manner, reveals the perspectives of this symbiosis and its often-problematic consequences, the major of which is the fragmentation of personality.