Silicon Valley Cinema

Description

Identifies in ‘Silicon Valley Cinema’ a recent trend in twenty-first century Hollywood film Reveals how ‘Silicon Valley Cinema’ builds upon previous Hollywood trendsAnalyses three distinct subtrends in ‘Silicon Valley Cinema’: biopics, films about the workplace, and science fiction action films, all of which are set in Silicon ValleyDemonstrates how this trend interrogates Silicon Valley’s development, impact on our present world, and its potential to determine our human future Silicon Valley corporations now dominate our daily lives to the extent that many of us now question their ability to determine the direction of human life in the twenty-first century. The 2010s saw Hollywood filmmakers engaging in this very debate. Through a sequence of films ranging from biopics of key Silicon Valley leaders to science fiction action films and whimsical workplace comedies, Hollywood films probed Silicon Valley’s impact on our past, present, and future. Silicon Valley Cinema analyses these films, arguing that they seek to encourage scepticism about our Silicon Valley overlords and have us step back from our immersion in Silicon Valley’s world. Doing so, they suggest, might make our working lives more pleasurable, our world a better place, and might even help us avoid a war with genetically enhanced apes or avert a robot-led apocalypse. Contents Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1 Precursors Chapter 1 Technology and Surveillance in Millennial Hollywood Chapter 2 Critiquing Twenty-First-Century Capitalism Chapter 3 Hollywood’s Bay Area Part 2 Real Genius Chapter 4 The Silicon Valley Biopic Chapter 5 Constructing the Silicon Valley Icon Part 3 Silicon Valley’s Dystopian Utopia Chapter 6 Technology Solutionism and the World of Work Chapter 7 Dystopian Diversity Part 4 Silicon Valley’s Evil Geniuses Chapter 8 Posthumanity and Masculinity Chapter 9 The Turbo-capitalist Tech Bro Conclusion: Why Him? and the Dialectics of Silicon Valley Cinema Bibliography Index