Page 191 - Cyberculture and New Media
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182 Cyborg Goddesses: The Mainframe Revisited
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trilogy: Resident Evil: Extinction. The T-virus contamination, wiping out all
living beings and leaving the rest zombie-like, enacts major scenes on the
Nevada desert. Therefore, desert scenes intertwine with high-technology
science laboratories. In this sequel to the film, entry to the high technology
lab is through a shabby hut in the middle of the desert, as opposed to the
mansion in the first two films: reinforcing strong suggestions of extinction in
the desert. Alice in her sand color sexy attire operates with high-powered in
built and external weapons to rescue the survivors together with other officers
she meets. Superimposed over this background is Alice’s cloning. The
scientist this time ventures into multiplying Alice innumerably to obtain the
antidote through her blood. Alice’s multiplication however is a hopeful
remark of survival to the benefit of those who still exists in the north.
Therefore, the female figure is yet again future’s hope after the techno
deluge.
Thus, as opposed to the emphasized technological dimension, the
pastoral element loses ground. The friendly raccoon of the former two films,
in Resident Evil: Extinction leaves its place to the crows. Alice destroys all
contaminated and mutated ferocious crows feeding over contaminated
humans. Quite a gothic literary symbol the crows, get wiped-out in Alice’s
concentrated superhuman power. Therefore, in the Resident Evil films a
technologically enhanced human nature wins over both bland nature and evil.
Alice’s artificially multiplied body is another example to this condition. In
the American myth and symbol context, Leo Marx’s The Machine in the
Garden, (1964) emphasizes the train as a well-known symbol for technology,
just as the bridge is, in Alan Trachtenberg’s the Brooklyn Bridge: Myth and
Symbol for a Nation, (1979). These are former examples bringing together
the technologic and the natural as part of an understanding of a usable past
bringing together fact and fiction. The contemporary technologic era evolves
exponentially in an accelerated pace. All the way from the Corliss engine, the
steamboat, the train, the cars, the rockets, and computers towards an age of
genetics an update in reconciliation of new means of technologic expression
along with classical understandings of myth and symbol seems to indicate a
necessity. In this respect, scientific developments along with literary and
cultural reference points need reevaluation at each stage in relation to their
cultural contexts.
Within the context of the cyborg goddess, the feminine as
technology’s vessel adds further into the myth and symbol construction.
Different from Donna Haraway’s cyborg with no origin story but a mere
oppositional utopic construction at the critical edge, the cyborg goddess,
combines in one the past, present and the future. All the way from the Cybele
cult onwards as a builder of civilizations, an understanding of regeneration by
means of violence oscillated from gender to gender through history. First, to
the detriment of the male gender, then the feminine and now in the present