Contemporary sci-fi films fuse existential angst with technological anxiety

Evidence

The unnamed object of desire here is authenticity. This theme also haunts modern entertainment, just as much as it did in the 1950s. Existential anxiety is more closely intertwined with technological anxiety than ever in films such as Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, the Wachowskis’ Matrix, Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1001

Categorization

• SEED: An essay could trace the existentialist lineage of AI and simulated-reality films from Blade Runner through Ex Machina, arguing the genre is the primary vehicle for twenty-first-century bad-faith questioning.
• XREF: connects to: Technological utopias mask a fear of our embodied vulnerability; Intimacy became a temporary experience molded by speculative technologies; Computers fail at the rich texture of ordinary lived experience — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1023 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Technological utopias mask a fear of our embodied vulnerability #corroborates (0.82)
• Modern fears now center on runaway technology rather than genocide #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 622
• Intimacy became a temporary experience molded by speculative technologies #expands (0.72)
• Computers fail at the rich texture of ordinary lived experience #corroborates (0.70) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1023