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Culture |
Computers - what 1980s Hollywood
made them: The 1980s fascinated their film watching audience with the idea of Artificial Intelligence. It may have been first introduced to them with HAl, the cold, yet emotion feeling computer in Space odyssey, but the 80s bought the idea back from 1969 with a whole load of new plots and intelligent computers to act out the sometimes scary, other times amusing films. From the futuristic distopian Mad Max, or War games which showed how much people distrusted computers, to the lighter films like Electric dreams that simply acted out the idea what if a computer could think? What is all ways strange, yet predictable about the cinema is that films will, and all ways do reflect real life. Maybe not realistically, but computers in the 80s were taking over, not with lasers and Artificial Intelligence. They were taking over offices and homes throughout the decade with their neat ultra efficient capability's. What scared viewers of these films was that we do depend on them, due to our deficiencies and inability to calculate and plan multiple things at the same time in seconds. The evil super computers almost took over from aliens and other monsters in films. A common theme throughout the genre was that they may be ultra efficient, but they have no grasp of reality. For example; The WOPR in War games only considered WW3 as a game, a game you play to win. Another popular theme was if these machines we depend on could think would they want us any more, what purpose do we serve to them? Computers were considered these strange new things that were a mystery, they were thought of as cold and unfeeling, yet they gave them a personality in the films. With their superior intelligence they regarded anything below them as inferior, or of little importance. This was the basis for many plot lines in sci fi movies. as with many things in this decade, the 80s culture took an old genre then reshaped it with its own styles and ideas. Pop culture does seam to go in cycles bringing back older ideas, but with a new twist. |
