Film Studies - UEA

The University of East Anglia(School of English and American Studies)Course Title: MA in Theatre Directing: Text and ProductionYear of Study: 2002/2003Tutor Name: Dr Justine AshbyStudent Name: Andrew NovellStudent Number: 0202401 Module Name: Gender and Genre in Contemporary CinemaUnit Code: EASFM011Word Count: 5000 - 6000Hand in Date: 17/01/2003

Gender and GenreEssay

Title:“How has Hollywood cinema use gender and genre to depict certain contemporary social anxieties over computer technology?”

© Andrew Novell

MA in Theatre Direction: Text andProduction

08/11/20221

Introduction

By and large, Hollywood has traditionally sought to

place computer technology squarely in the realm of

science fiction, far removed from the everyday lives of

ordinary people. The most frequent depictions of the

computer on screen have been as massive supercomputers

constructed by mad scientists and fanatical

superpowers, which proceed to obtain autonomous

destructive abilities — for example, the ‘doomsday

device’ in Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1966), the

sinister voyeuristic HAL2000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey

(Stanley Kubrick, 1968), the raping computer in The

Demon Seed (Donald Cammell, 1977), and the world

dominating cybernetics of the future as depicted in The

Terminator (James Cameron, 1984).

However, the Hollywood of the 1990s, reflexive to

growing popular fascination and anxiety over the

phenomenal growth in computer technology, and in

particular the Internet, saw the emergence of a host of

computer-focussed films which emphasised the dangers

inherent in our growing day-to-day dependence on this

new technology — for example, in films such as Sneakers

(Phil Alden Robinson, 1992), Hackers (Iain Softley,

1995), Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995), Virtuosity

(Brett Leonard, 1995), and Copycat (Jon Amiel, 1995).

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In little more than a decade, these films

effectively removed the credible use of computers from

the confines of the science fiction genre, from distant

galaxies and future dystopian societies, and

established them squarely as a cross-generic plot

device for use in a whole range of popular cinematic

forms from romantic comedy to the espionage thriller.

In so doing the broadening of genres containing

computer technology also extended the credible use of

different gender roles in relationship to the computer.

No longer were computers confined to the male dominated

world of the military establishment and the scientific

community, as increasingly films came to depict

computers predominantly in the female domain of the

home and the office, and consequently permitted the

exploration of dramatic scenarios and anxieties related

to the computer to be explored on screen as never

before.

In this paper I want to examine how mainstream

Hollywood has chosen to depict some contemporary social

anxieties towards computer technology. The two

anxieties I wish to examine here are the perception of

a correlation between of computer technology and sexual

deviance, and the potential treat from the computer and

in particular the Internet to the family. I

© Andrew Novell

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particularly wish to examine how Hollywood has used

gender and genre to depict these anxieties. To this

end, I intent to look at three mainstream Hollywood

films which focus on the use of computers and the

Internet: these films are Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg,

1993), Disclosure (Barry Levinson, 1994), and The Net

(Irwin Winkler, 1995).

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MA in Theatre Direction: Text andProduction

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Computer Technology and Deviant Sexuality

As mentioned in the introduction to this paper, the

move in the 90s away from computers being confined to

the science fiction genre undoubtedly permitted the

relationship between women and this new technology to

be investigated in greater depth than ever before.

With personal computers and the Internet entering

almost every home and office, domains traditionally

associated with women’s lives, Hollywood was quick to

capitalise on the dramatic potential the invasion of

this new technology might provide. We would expect to

see, and indeed do see, a host of ‘stalker’ films

switching their attention from menacing phone calls to

menacing emails — for example in the sub-genre of the

psychological ‘cyber-thriller’, epitomised in the film

Copycat starring Sigourney Weaver as a criminal

psychiatrist electronically menaced by a serial killer.

However, what is perhaps more surprising is the number

of films which, rather than focussing purely on women

as victims of cyber predators, also depict women as

characteristically in possession of formidable computer

skills, and even distinctly predatory tendencies,

themselves — Disclosure being perhaps the most blatant

example of this.

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In fact, women are overwhelmingly portrayed in 90s

Hollywood as almost mystically affiliated with computer

technology and the information superhighway. All three

films discussed in this paper feature women who

apparently relate at the most advanced level, and

purely through instinct (we never see any evidence of

attending computer training classes or of The Rough Guide

To The Internet in these films!), with the detailed

workings of computer systems. In Jurassic Park, Alexis,

or Lex as she prefers to be know (Ariana Richards), the

granddaughter of park owner John Hammond (Richard

Attenborough), is described as a ‘hacker’, as is the

heroine of The Net, Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock), a

term which indicates considerable dexterity of computer

understanding, while in Disclosure, Meredith Johnson

(Demi Moore) is depicted as being as dexterous in her

manipulation of virtual reality as she is of real life.

This apparent kinship between femininity and

computer technology, which almost borders on cliché at

times in these movies, is further emphasised through

the corresponding representation of masculine

incompetence with the self-same technology. Tom

Saunders (Michael Douglas) in Disclosure may be Head of

Production at computer giant Digicom, but he is at

turns depicted as unable to fathom the design flaw

which is plaguing the production of the new Arcamax

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system, unable to discover the identity of ‘a friend’

who is offering persistent email advice, and at one

point even finds himself locked out of the company

computer system and effectively rendered impotent in

his attempts to regain control of his life. Similarly,

a perceived dichotomy between natural feminine affinity

and natural male incompetence with the computer is most

conspicuously portrayed in Jurassic Park, where

palaeontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) is depicted as

possessing an almost ‘supernatural’ aversion to

computers (his very proximity to a computer at one

point apparently causes it to malfunction), and

consequently places him in direct opposition to the

‘natural’ gift of computer wiz-kid Lex.

Yet, what is the origin of Hollywood’s undoubted

bias in favour of the depiction of women as possessing

a natural empathy with computer technology?

Of course, at some level this perceived gender bias

is played for its humorous potential. We are clearly

expected to delight in seeing the otherwise invincible

male ‘heroes’ of these films regress into infantile

stupidity as they fumble over keyboards which the

apparently ‘weaker’ sex master with easy. Certainly in

Jurassic Park, Alan Grant’s technical incompetence is

satirised beyond his mere allergy to computers (at on

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point, frustrated with his failure to fasten a safety-

belt, he simple ties the two ends of it together), and

his diametrical position to computers in comparison to

Lex is as much a device to reinforce his stated

incompatibility with children as it is to reveal his

attitude towards the computer.

Similarly, when viewed from a positive feminist

perspective, we may well conclude that the apparent

affinity women share with computers in these films, and

in particular their depicted mastery of the Internet as

a tool for solving complex problems, is an

uncharacteristically enlightened recognition on the

part of Hollywood that a superior intelligence

possessed of women gives them a God given edge over men

when it comes to mastering this new technology. If not

a greater intelligence (God forbid Hollywood should

really suggest that), then at least a quick-wittedness,

a ‘street wise’ quality, possessed of these women

appears, to Hollywood’s mind at least, to offer the key

to their technological compatibility — something

Hollywood also apparently associates with black

characters, who, like women, are similarly repeatedly

depicted as in possession of an ‘uncanny’ affinity with

computer technologies — for example, we might consider

Richard Pryor in Superman II (Richard Lester, 1983) and

Whoopi Goldberg in Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Penny Marshall,

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1986), both of whom are portrayed as in possession of

instinctive computer skills in direct proportion to

their predilection for verbal dexterity, as is the only

black character to feature in Jurassic Park, the theme

park’s manager, Ray Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson).

Likewise, while in an almost euphorically generous

mood towards Hollywood, we may even conclude that the

mastery by women over computer technology is stressed

to permit female stars to compete on a more even

playing field with the male stars that have

traditionally dominated the science fiction genre — as

we see for example in the muscle bound rampaging

cyborgs of the 80s in the films The Terminator and RoboCop

(Paul Verhoeven, 1987). Clearly, the 90s saw these

macho creations give way to the freedom from physical

limitations offered by the more androgynous realms of

virtual reality.1 Meredith Johnson in Disclosure dreams

of just such a cybernetic utopia of sexual equality

when she states to an assembled audience of,

significantly, male and female Digicom executives:

What we’re selling here is freedom. We offerthrough technology what religion and

1 A move which can be equally detected in the evolution from theclearly masculine armour like bulk of Schwarzenegger’s cyborg in The Terminator to the feminised androgyny of the shape shifting micro-processor controlled T-1000 (Robert Patrick) in Terminator II (James Cameron, 1991).

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revolution have promised but never delivered.Freedom from the physical body.

Nevertheless, a more cynical reading of Hollywood’s

motives here might suggest a sub-textual agenda

underlying these films: namely that the depiction of

female sexual nonconformity is being used here to

expose the common contemporary anxiety over the

possibility of a sexually deviant nature residing in

computer technology, and in particular, the Internet.

Undoubtedly, it is a sad, but true fact that the

Internet, an invention that offers the prospect of

unimaginable access to vast stores of human knowledge,

should, almost from its earliest conception, have

obtained the popular urbane stigma as a harbinger of

sexual menace. Ask most people what they think of when

they think of the Internet and you are as likely to

hear the words pornography and paedophilia as

frequently as those of modems and megabytes. Arguably,

given such a widespread popular paranoia assigned to

this technology, it would be remarkable indeed if we

did not detect a recognition of such anxiety in the

otherwise socially, and morality, conservative

contemplations of mainstream Hollywood.

For example, we may well ask why, as well as being

depicted as computer aficionados, the heroines of The

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Net, Jurassic Park, and Disclosure are all conspicuously

depicted as being in diametrical opposition to

conventional female gender roles?

Take Angela in The Net. She is portrayed as a

solitary young woman, one who apparently exists

primarily for her career as a computer systems analyst,

whose only sustained social contact is the online

community of cyber friends she communicates with in

chat rooms. We are told, and at considerable length,

of her failed past real life relationships (though in

her thirties she has apparently only had two lovers —

one of whom was not only married, but also her

psychiatrist, a recipe arguably not destined for

success), while her only sexual encounter in the film

is suggested as representing little more than a spur of

the moment one-night-stand with the man who,

ultimately, attempts to kill her. Clearly, The Net

links Angela’s failure to achieve the recognised

signifiers of stereotypical female success in the

traditional Hollywood mode — boyfriend, husband,

children, marriage — to a deep rooted sexual

insecurity; a problem which, paradoxically, her online

relationships, the film appears to suggests, are only

prolonging rather than helping to alleviate. The

Internet simply permits her to hide from the dangerous,

but ultimately life affirming, exposure to the real

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world and sexual contact. As Angela replies to a cyber

friend suggesting the possibility of a ‘real’ date, to

her mind “The net is the ultimate condom”. Also, the

association between sexual deviation from the

conventional as depicted by Hollywood and the Internet

is further reinforced through endless talk of computer

viruses, in relation to the film’s central plot which

revolves around a US Senator falsely diagnosed with

AIDS, and consequently driven to suicide, by an online

blood test.

Similarly, we again appear to see the correlation

between sexual deviation from conventional female

behaviour and the passion for computer technology in

the character of Lex in Jurassic Park. Lex is from the

film’s outset established with the peripheries of the

computer community. She may well correct her brother’s

assertion that she is a computer ‘nerd’, stating her

preference to be called a ‘hacker’, yet this auto-

christening still places her squarely in the

unconventional camp of computer society. Her

gender/character non-conformity is reinforced through

the portrayal of Lex as the classic embodiment of the

‘tomboy’. Susan Jeffers writes of the tomboy:

A mapping of transgression that can be contained, the tomboy signals a composite of

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experience and innocence – of capabilities and energies together with sexual naïveté.2

Lex’s practical clothes, messy hair, rebellious

attitude, and de-feminised abbreviation of name, all

place her well outside the conventional depiction of

femininity by mainstream Hollywood, and surely function

on one level to justify her affinity with all things

scientific; in particular computer technology. Again,

the sexual ambiguity of Lex as ‘tomboy’ is heightened

by a corresponding effeminate depiction of her brother,

Tim (Joseph Mazzello), whose sexual nonconformity is

shown through his lack of height, physical

vulnerability, dependence on others, and even perhaps,

in his possession of a ‘girly’ love of cute animals.

Arguably, what we see here once more is a deliberate

correlation between deviant sexuality and an affinity,

or antithetical hatred, of computer technology.

Perhaps Hollywood’s correlation of sexual deviance

and computer technology is most explicit when its films

seek to realise the anxiety over the potential for

computers, or in this case more frequently the use of

the Internet, to release uncontrollable sexual desires

and urges in otherwise well adjusted indeviduals. Such

a correlation between sexuality out of control and

2 Susan Jeffords, Working Girls, p.84.

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technology out of control is of course hardly a new

concept in film narrative:

We know from Metropolis that technology out of control is closely associated with sexuality out of control, two particularly terrifying forms of disorder.3

For example, consider the topical issue of the

misuse of the Internet in the workplace for sexual

gratification (more and more companies track as

standard their employee’s surfing habits, with visits

to pornographic sites often resulting in dismissal) and

the eternal currency in the sensational Hollywood

narratives which focus on the threat posed in the

workplace from unconventional, sexually liberated

women, who are out of control and looking to get to the

top in their career no matter what the cost. Consider

here Disclosure — a complex hybridised film which

combines elements of the cyber-thriller with the

melodrama to convey contemplations on the theme of

corporate menace and aggressive sexuality — where

Meredith Johnson, with her sexual predatory instincts

and her ‘affinity’ with virtual reality, perhaps

provides the most obvious correlation between computers

and deviants sexuality in 90s cinema. For example, it

is hard not to see this correlation between the

3 Peter Wollen, ‘Theme Park and Variation’, in Action/Spectacle Cinema: A Sight and Sound Reader, ed by José Arroyo (London: The British Film Institute, 2000), p.186.

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sexually predatory woman and the malevolent computer in

the films most memorable scene, as Johnson and Saunders

meet in virtual reality. Liberated from the physical

confines of her feminine body when depicted in virtual

form, ironically, a freedom she herself had suggested

as a possible means of attaining equality beyond the

confines of sexuality, ironically Johnson only achieves

her visual demonisation as the personification of the

popular conception of the malevolent being lurking at

the heart of both office sexual politics and

cyberspace:

VR [virtual reality] reveals a secret truth repressed by political correctness (but at the centre of the film), that the sexualised woman is itself monstrous, especially in the workplace.4

This association is further heightened by the

depiction of Johnson as a kind of femme fatale. Johnson

possesses many of the characteristics most associated

with this most fascinating of film noir personas, from

her quick-witted predilection for repartee (we perhaps

see the true reason for Hollywood’s afore mentioned

association with fast-talking characters and computers

— to reveal a craftiness and deceit at the heart of the

computer technology) to her long flowing hair draped 4 Jude Davies and Carol R. Smith, ‘Disclosure: Virtual identities

sexual politics and the Pacific Rim economies’, in Davis and Smith, Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality in American Film (Edinburgh: Keele University Press, 1997), p.42.

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mysteriously over one eye. Forming an enigmatic riddle

good enough to challenge the detective powers of a Sam

Spade or Philip Marlow, she is the personification of

the narrative riddle Tom Saunders must solve to regain

control of his life. As a strong, sexually liberated

woman, whose motives for her actions remain a mystery

for almost the entire film, she serves as a mirror to

reflect — one is tempted to say as Through a Glass Darkly —

the seemingly unfathomably design flaw to plague the

new Arcamax computer system. The use of the sexual

ambiguity surrounding the femme fatale to reflect the

similarly incomprehensible nature of flawed technology

is of cause not without precedent: for example, the

film Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) depicts just such

an enigmatic correlation between the femme fatale and the

precise nature of artificial intelligence:

The film’s female lead and romantic interest Rachel (Sean Young) first appears in 1940s’ attire — a tailored suit, her hair up on her head in a sculpted style and a cigarette emphasising her painted red lips. She appears smoking, calm and sophisticated, a model of the self-confident heroine. Rachel’s identity is also in question, a narrative device that once more presents woman as enigma, a puzzle to be figured out by the hero.5

5 Yvonne Tasker, Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (London: Routledge, 1998), p.122.

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Ultimately, what appears to reveal itself in this

brief survey of these films is that non-conventional

female gender roles and computer technology appear to

be specifically linked in the mind of 90s Hollywood,

and that arguably this is intended as a subliminal

recognition of the perceived popular anxiety of a

correlation between computer technologies and sexually

deviant activities. Arguably, the depiction of Angela,

Lex, and Johnson, appear to represent allegorical

personifications of the sexual deviant nature of

computer technology, and although we cannot conclude

that the sole raison d’êtra for Hollywood’s positioning of

these ‘deviant’ women so closely with computers is to

acknowledge popular anxiety over computer technology

and deviant sexual behaviour, it is debatable whether

or not such an interpretation, particularly in a

retrospective analysis such as this conducted in the

currently scandalous climate of sex and the net, can

possibly be avoided. Certainly, we should remain

cautious about simply jumping to the conclusion that

these films truly represent Hollywood breaking new

ground in the depiction of women in central roles in

these movies. Arguably, these supposedly ‘liberated’

computer heroines are being exploited for their

vulnerability and sexually deviance just as much as

women have ever on screen.

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Computer Technology and the Threat to the

Family

Another common contemporary anxiety over computers, and

again particularly the Internet, is the possible effect

such new technology may have on the conventional

character of the family. Of course such fear resides

in any technological device which threatens to change

the normalcy of family behaviour, and can be seen in

the popular perception of the dangers surrounding the

development of a whole host of, primarily media, based

inventions: Television in the 50s, and Video in the

80s, apparently threatened to stop families going to

the cinema together, while the computer games consoles

of Nintendo and PlayStation in the middle American bedrooms

of the 80s and 90s apparently threatened a similar

danger in removing children from the sociality of

family living room and the communal TV. Today, the

Internet suggests to threaten a two-fold danger: once

again to remove individual family members, and children

in particular, from the heart of the family nucleus,

and even more worryingly, to provide an easy access for

others (potential predatory online invaders) to enter

into the sanctuary of the family home, with possibly

terrifying results — anxieties which arguably prove

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central to the narratives of all three films under

discussion here.

For example, The Net begins with a family already in

crisis. Angela Bennett’s mother is in a psychiatric

hospital, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, while her

father, we learn as the narrative unfolds, has

abandoned the family years ago. Clearly we are

supposed to read the breakdown of Angela’s real family

as responsible for her retreat into the hermit style

existence popularly associated with the computer ‘nerd’

(she has lived in her house for four years, and yet her

closest neighbour fails to recognise her). As Angela

herself confesses, the net is the “perfect place to

hide.” Rejecting the normalcy of the conventional

family, Angela is thus established as constructing a

surrogate ‘family’ on the Internet — her only ‘human’

intercourse being the online cyber friends encountered

in the chat rooms she frequently visits. As ‘Ice Man’,

one of her cyber friends, comments of Angela’s virtual

identity, “You are one of us”. Yet, the dangers of

such friendships are constantly highlighted in the

film. For example, the killer who descends on Angela’s

life learns her most vulnerable personal details,

particularly those he uses to threaten her mother, from

spying on her supposedly confidential online

revelations to her cyber friends. Similarly, her

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closest online friend, ‘Cyber Bob’, is arbitrarily

killed simply due to his supposedly anonymous

association with her, reaffirming once more the

inherently dangerous reverberation of surfing the net.

Clearly then, the correlation between the

disintegration of the traditional family group, and the

invasion of the hostile predator, are both linked to

the Internet here.

In passing, it is also worth noting that The Net seeks

to raise anxiety over the possible treat that computers

pose to the erasure of personal identities and

relationships, and in particular the most apparently

fundamental family bond in the movie, that between

mother and daughter. Angela’s family history is erased

in exactly the same way by her mother’s increasing

decline into dementia as it is by the computer

terrorists who seek to delete her identity online. As

Claudia Springer explains:

In The Net, Angela’s slippery identity… is entwined with her mother’s. In this case, the mother has Alzheimer’s disease and is living in a state of benign confusion in a retirement home. When she fails to recogniseher own daughter, Angela is distraught. Angela has actually lost her identity before the cyber-terrorists even enter the scene, because her mother does not know her.6

6 Claudia Springer, ‘Psycho-Cybernetics in the films of the 1990s’ in Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema, ed. Annette

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The depiction of Alzheimer here is clearly used to

mirror the ease with which our identity may be erased

through our growing dependence on computer storage

methods — a potential threat recognised by Angela when

she states, “Our whole lives are on the computer… our

whole world is sitting there like this little

electronic shadow on each and every one of us.” This

theme of loss of individual identity through our

increasing reliance on computer technology is also

present in Disclosure, where Tom Sanders’s identity is

slowly replaced not only by his deletion from the

company’s computer system by Johnson, but also by his

lost of identity in the eyes of his wife as loyal

husband and family provider, and his lost of position

and respect in the workplace — again, all as a result

of the computer, and its associated demonic

personification, Johnson.

Similarly, returning to the threat to the family

unit, even though admittedly in a far more subliminal

way, Jurassic Park also seeks to establish a correlation

between computers and a danger to the family. Of

course the use of the action/adventure genre naturally

places the family in crisis in this movie — but the

precise source of this threat is easily missed by a

cursory examination of its narrative. Talk of Jurassic

Kuhn (London: Verso Publishing, 1999), p.214.

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Park inevitably focuses on dinosaurs and, as the very

title suggests, a fascination with the recreation of

the prehistoric past. However, from the very beginning

of the film there is prevalent talk of computers —

perhaps not surprisingly, as the film is written by the

technologically obsessed Michael Crichton, who is also

responsible for computer dominated Disclosure, and whose

fascination with the thrills, as well as potential

dangers, inherent in our love of computer technology

has formed the backbone of his work from his very first

film, West World (Michael Crichton, 1973). Again and

again, Jurassic Park emphasises the central role of

computer technology in producing the treats in its

narrative — from the initial recreation of dinosaurs

via gene sequencing supercomputers, to their final

escape as the result of a sabotaging of the park’s

computerised containment system.

Arguably, the threat from computer technology is

focussed primarily on the danger to the family in the

film, which, typically for Spielberg, is already

depicted as decidedly dysfunctional from the outset.

For example, we are told that the parents of Tim and

Lex are involved in a divorce — resulting directly in

their presences at the park and their being placed in

danger — and together with surrogate parents in the

form of Grant and Sattler (Laura Dern), unmarried and

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with Grant a self confessed child hater, come to form a

decidedly uneasy family unit of disharmony. Clearly,

this ‘family’ is not only one in crisis, but also the

central group under threat — obviously from the large

carnivores prowling outside — but equally from the

technology unleashed through the actions of the greedy

computer scientist Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight).

Arguably, this threat is further subliminally

inferred through the portrayal of Nedry in relation to

Lex. For example, it is noticeable that both

characters are established as ‘hackers’, even if they

do occupy the antithesis of the stereotypical images of

this particular character type. Nedry is the classic

computer ‘boffin’, eccentric, overweight, slovenly,

bespectacled, quirky, while Lex is the classic kid

‘hacker’, bright, intelligent, and as mentioned

earlier, tomboyish. Both can be easily imagined

spending long solitary hours before video screens in an

attempt at a virtual escape from the desperately

unsatisfactory reality of their lives. Although these

characters never physically meet in the film — perhaps

a fact in itself significant — we know throughout that

Nedry is directly responsible for the physical danger

threatening Lex in the predatorily metaphorical form of

the velosoraptors (their release is a mere by-product

of his deactivation of the park’s computer operated

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gate system to necessitate his escape), and is it not

possible to read this ‘virtual’ relationship between

Nedry and Lex as a subliminal reference to the very

real dangers of paedophilia on the Internet? Nedry is

seen as devious, cunning, and predatorily manipulative

(at one point he charms a ‘cute’ retile with childish

small-talk), and is given to a predilection for crude

childish humour (he puts shaving foam on a slice of

cake) — and one can imagine him using just such

behaviour to charm vulnerable children with humour in

chat rooms, his grotesque bulk everyone’s subconscious

vision of the stereotypical paedophile. Lex, in

contrast, is also clearly depicted as victim —

vulnerable, scared, alone, and at the hands of an

aggressor she has never even met. This correlation is

perhaps sickeningly finally confirmed as Lex,

attempting to restore order to the computer mayhem

Nedry has unleashed, sits in his chair, at his computer

console, types at his keyboard, amidst’ the detritus of

his slovenly existence.

Where as The Net and Jurassic Park feature conventional

family values already in crisis at the beginning of

their narratives, and presumably are intended to

indicate that computers represent a symptom rather than

the pathogen of disorder (interestingly then something

which may potentially be ‘cured’), in Disclosure we are

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also given a clear prophetical warning on the potential

of computers to threaten the stability of the otherwise

stable middle American family. Disclosure opens with the

daughter of Saunders, the seemingly idea example of the

successful corporate executive and ‘new’ man, sitting

happy by the family Personal Computer in the living

room and announcing the arrival of an email for her

father. In a film where a succession of obscene and

threatening email operations will feature, expected

from advance publicity featuring them in its trailers

and reviews, the potential of the child’s innocence to

be destroyed from such electronic material falling into

this little girl’s hands subliminally grips our

imagination throughout the film.

Similarly, the mere effect of casting Michael

Douglas as the victimised Tom Sanders in Disclosure

brings with it an inevitable intertextual association

with the family under threat. Douglas is strongly

associated with the male ‘victims’ of films such as

Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992) and Fatal Attraction

(Adrian Lyne, 1987), both of which feature male

characters being dominated by strong, most probably

mentally deranged, women, who ultimately come to

threaten not just him but his family as well. The

intertextual connotation of the presence in Disclosure of

Douglas’s star persona as victim, once more at the

© Andrew Novell

MA in Theatre Direction: Text andProduction

08/11/202226

hands of a powerful and sexually predatory woman, in

this case Johnson, ultimately subliminally communicates

the distinct feeling that once again his family is

going to come under a physical threat, even though in

fact there is never an on screen suggestion of this

(except perhaps from the financial insecurity his

possible dismissal from Digicom may bring).

Once again, as we have already seen in the apparent

linking of a perceived female sexual deviance with

computer technology, Hollywood has sought to explore

the common anxieties of the potential threat to the

disruption of the tradition family through the

subliminal linking of this with the danger perceived as

inherent in computer and information technology.

© Andrew Novell

MA in Theatre Direction: Text andProduction

08/11/202227

Conclusion

In this essay I have attempted to consider just two

possible methods in which Hollywood films of the 90s

have apparently chosen to depict the growing influence

of computer technologies on our lives. Clearly, I have

only focussed on two, deliberately negative, forms of

its depiction; however, it would appear from the above

analysis that there is a surprisingly consistent

scepticism and negativity by Hollywood in its portrayal

of the growth in computer technology. The causes for

this is undoubtedly in part a result of the obvious new

dramatic life this technology can bring to otherwise

hackneyed generic narratives — in particular the

thriller and the melodrama. However, even in

apparently positive depictions of computer technology —

such as the light-hearted new romantic comedy You’ve Got

Mail (Nora Ephron, 1998) we continue to see a

correlation between deceit and sex at the heart of the

computer film narrative, and this is only one of the

numerous examples of such films that feature the use of

the Internet as a clandestine plot device for spreading

chaos and disorder — What Women Want (Nancy Meyers,

2000), Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996), and My Best

Friend’s Wedding (P.J. Hogan, 1997) could all be cited

here in support of this argument.

© Andrew Novell

MA in Theatre Direction: Text andProduction

08/11/202228

As we have seen, one of the most consistent

associations between deviant behaviour and computer

technology is that between women and the computer. On

the face of it, these films appear to offer the

opportunity for women to take control of certain

mainstream Hollywood genres, such as the

action/adventure and the thriller, in a way simply not

possible in the earlier machismo dominated movies of

the 1980s. Removed from the inability to physically

compete with muscle bound men, these virtual reality

women are potentially as strong, if not stronger, than

their male adversaries. However, the linking of female

intellect with the intelligence of these machines has

in fact, as we can perhaps see from the above analysis,

come to establish a convention of association between

the duplicity of computer and information technology

with the unpredictable, and often equally duplicitous,

behaviour of sexually nonconformist women. Again and

again, we see in the films of the 1990s the moralistic

denouncement of women who deviate from established

conservative gender stereotypes serving as an equally

moralistic metaphorical condemnation of computer and

information technology as an inherently sexually

deviant phenomenon.

In a similar manner, Hollywood has also sought to

reflect the popular anxieties over the contemporary

© Andrew Novell

MA in Theatre Direction: Text andProduction

08/11/202229

threat to the traditional nuclear family by

highlighting the many ways in which computer and

information technology may serve to further strain the

already feeble bonds of domestic stability. We perhaps

see this most clearly in the way Hollywood has

demonised the computer and the Internet to provide a

convenient narrative device to threaten the most

vulnerable members of the family, usually children, and

to terrorise characters that transgress the

conventionally established boundaries of acceptable

moral behaviour.

Of course, in conclusion we must recognise that this

paper has been written in a climate where popular

social anxieties over the dangers posed by our

increasingly computer dominated existence are at an all

time high. From computer fraud to pornography, cyber-

stalking to international terrorism, the use of

computers and the Internet for the full spectrum of

illicit activities is scarcely ever out of the news

headlines. In this light, we may question the validity

of our deconstructive interpretation of the computer

dominated films of the 90s in the presence of such

current hysteria — this is perhaps a particularly valid

consideration when we come to ascribe paedophilic

connotations to the reading of these film, as the

association between such explicit sexual deviance and

© Andrew Novell

MA in Theatre Direction: Text andProduction

08/11/202230

the Internet is in fact a quite recent phenomenon.

Nevertheless, we may with some confidence suggest that

what we witness in these films from the 90s is the

proto-genesis, the birth, of our current Millennial

disquiet over the technological innovations of the

computer, the Internet, and the information super-

highway. Ultimately, we may yet come to see from

Hollywood, or perhaps more likely from the freer

Independent sector, films that attempt to explore

somewhat more intelligently the complex effects, both

positive and negative, that the arguably greatest

technological advance since the industrial revolution,

i.e. that of computer technology, will have on our

lives in the future.

© Andrew Novell

MA in Theatre Direction: Text andProduction

08/11/202231

Bibliography

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Branston, Gill, Cinema and Cultural Modernity (London: Open University Press, 2000).

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Kuhn, Annette (ed.), Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema (London: Verso Publishing, 1990).

——— Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema (London: Verso Publishing, 1999).

Neale, Steve and Smith, Murray (eds.), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London: Routledge, 1998).

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Tasker, Yvonne, Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (London: Routledge, 1998).