Undo/Redo: The Evolution and Ideology of Time Travel Mind-Game Films
Please join us for a talk with our new faculty member, Assistant Professor of International Cinema, Dr. Seung-hoon Jeong on Tuesday May 4th at 7pm Undo/Redo: The Evolution and Ideology of Time Travel Mind-Game Films
If the new millennium trend of “mind-game film” plays games with characters and spectators through complex puzzle narratives, time travel may be the most fascinatingly puzzling mind-game motif. Time has indeed become a sort of space to visit or change even obsessively in contemporary Hollywood cinema since the 1980s classics The Terminator and Back to the Future up until the last decade’s Source Code, Arrival, and Tenet. Tracing this evolution concisely, I will illuminate two ethical functions of time travel in the drama and action genres: existential awakening and retroactive redemption. Then, I will highlight their transhuman shift and innovative yet dubious ideology driven by today’s sociopolitical sci-fi imagination.
