Analysing My Favourite Films

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Over my past three years at university I have sort of been excited for BCM 325 and sort of not. Every time the class has run my Twitter feed has been saturated by tweets about my favourite films; most of which I’d seen 5-10 times. Naturally I was both excited to study these academically, but also trepidatious about re-watching media I knew like the back of my hand (after all, I’d rather be exposed to something new). In the end I’ve found live-tweeting my analysis of these films an engaging and enriching experience, and I’m going to take you through it retrospectively, as a colossal sci-fi nerd.

2001: A Space Odyssey

To expand on this: I think a hybrid form of AI (LLM + another model) may very well reach HAL’s level of intelligence (though hopefully not his murderous intent).

It was interesting to see some of my peers’ engagements with science fiction thinking, something I have been doing as long as I can remember. Darko Suvin’s concept of the novum was new to me as a word, but was the reason I love sci-fi in the first place: imagining a possible future through the mechanism of a new thing. In the example of 2001, the primary novum was AI sentience and free will; and I think we are quite lucky to be studying this in Autumn 2023, when for the first time in history this “possible future” is becoming a reality.

Going into the first screening, I assumed that visual tweets (accompanying screenshots, for example) would do very well in terms of generating engagement, and so I kept my print screen button handy. However in the end it was the tweets exhibiting novel readings & extrapolations of the text which far out-performed my visually-based contributions, not just in likes/RTs but also in initiating exchanges.

In general I noticed the same of the tweets of my classmates, although the above thread was a notable combination of visual media and a unique and interesting take on the film.

A Selection of Tweets

https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1631113106935140352
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1631117411230584832
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1631120826891370497
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1631131724326535168
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1631144944906960896

Westworld

Westworld for me was a fun one – as it was the only film on the list I hadn’t already seen! I’m a big fan of the series and have been meaning to check out the OG. I actually found the live-tweeting experience to be a really great way to enjoy a new film, although I am sure I missed a lot. While the above tweet did very well, in general I found tweets generated by ChatGPT – of which I posted two or three per week – did not do as well as original tweets. They tended to be quite shallow and did not introduce novel new concepts or present interesting interpretations. The LLM did very well in the above tweet though, I think.

Westworld was a powerful lens through which to study cybernetics. Before this, I thought the word simply meant “robotic parts in an organic creature”, and so it was fascinating to understand there was a much larger conceptual framework for the concept, including feedback loops & system dynamics. In fact the robots in Westworld are not “cybernetic” in the shallow sense of the word at all – they are completely robotic. It is the system at large, a complicated intersection between technology and humanity, that is cybernetic. The screening got me thinking, too: when a peer commented about humans using the park to escape reality, it made me realise the parallels between the cold and antisocial behaviour of its clients and the behaviour of people in online games and forums, hiding behind their anonymity. In the same way the guests excuse their behaviour because “none of it is real”, these antisocial netizens (are we still saying netizen?) act out in their own simulated cybernetic experience.

Sometimes you have to go niche with it. I don’t think many in my audience had the context to appreciate this one, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to go for gold.

A Selection of Tweets

https://twitter.com/annas_media/status/1633646595999940608
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1633658739596341248
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1633646935327518722
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1633649846073847808
https://twitter.com/disladycaity/status/1633654097495883776
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1633662312614854656
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1633668042097041416
https://twitter.com/jasmynconnell/status/1633662509571002369

Blade Runner

Something I think not enough people recognise is that while visually the film broke new ground, conceptually the book was even more ground-breaking in its day.

Blade Runner was my favourite film for years. It might still be? Honestly I’m not sure – it’s a bit moody for me, these days. It really is the perfect film/lens through which to study trajectory analysis and forecasting. It gets a lot right (I’d argue that environmental destruction itself is a novum), and it gets some things wrong.

As a seasoned sci-fi enthusiast, I was more than aware that much of cyberpunk’s visual identity (let’s be honest, 99% of it) comes from Blade Runner, so it was interesting to immediately see my peers draw parallels to other cyberpunk media.

A Selection of Tweets

https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1636182044677148672
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1636183958596775937
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1636185555766771713
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1636188075218075648
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1636190380025868290
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1636191326000775168
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1636209805701578752

Ghost in the Shell

My favourite tweet of the screening.

GitS is literally peak fiction. Moving on…

c y b e r c r i m e

TBH I missed the most of this film as I watched it in Japanese with English subtitles (and it’s been a good 10 years since I last saw it). My Japanese is pretty good, but it’s not tweet in English while absorbing Japanese dialogue good. I noticed much less tweets from my peers this week. I wonder why? It’s a shame because I think this film is in many ways the most cerebral of all the media in this post.

A Selection of Tweets

https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1638720311473602560
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1638721751642406913
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1638729034514448386
https://twitter.com/ayyeblizz96/status/1638725670451949568
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1638727148650496000
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1638727662033342466

The Matrix

Oh..? What’s this?

Another classic. I had the DVD as a kid and I think this was rewatch no. 20. Again, the most interesting part of this screening was seeing those of my peers who had never seen the film react. Adding a layer of a analysis to that through the lens of cyberculture and cyberpunk just sweetened the delicious Matrix virgin tweets.

A Selection of Tweets

https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1641265469033447424
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1641265469033447424
https://twitter.com/siennahillcoat/status/1641256496469262337
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1641268014946594816
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1641277784533397506
https://twitter.com/dokidokiguy/status/1641285311862022145

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  1. Pingback: Live-Tweeting Exercise 2: Electric Boogaloo | Welcome to the Thunderdome

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