Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English & Film Studies

Program Name/Specialization

Textuality, Media, and Print Studies

Faculty/School

Faculty of Arts

First Advisor

Russell Kilbourn

Advisor Role

Guide research and provide feedback.

Abstract

This dissertation examines how science fiction cinema constructs and reimagines the technological sublime in the twentieth century: the experience of awe, terror, and admiration provoked by human-made power and scale. Drawing on the philosophical foundations of the sublime in Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant and extending through Leo Marx’s and David E. Nye’s theorization of the technological sublime, I propose an aesthetic mode in which representation inflected with affect translates technological spectacle into examinations of humanity’s role and agency in the face of overwhelming technologized worlds and in some cases, even the universe itself.

Through three distinct historical periods across the science fiction genre, the dissertation traces this phenomenon’s evolution. Pre-1950 films such as Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902), Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), and William Cameron Menzies’ Things to Come (1936) transformed the awe once reserved for natural landscapes into monumental visions of factories, electrified cities, and vast industrial infrastructures. Mid-century cinema repositioned the sublime around space rockets, nuclear weapons, and cosmic exploration, staging temporal as well as spatial immensity in films from Eugène Lourie’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes (both 1968). By the 1980s and 1990s, the locus of technological fascination shifted again as CGI produced new immaterial forms of spectacle in works centred on virtual reality such as Steven Lisberger’s Tron (1982), Brett Leonard’s The Lawnmower Man (1992), and Robert Longo’s Johnny Mnemonic (1995).

By demonstrating how science fiction film continually redefines the sites of the sublime, this dissertation shows that cinema does not merely document technological change but actively shapes how audiences feel and conceptualize it. The technological sublime persists as a mutable aesthetic and cultural force, shifting from factories to rockets to cyberspace, yet always retaining its core experience, one that negotiates the boundary between human reason and the incredible power of technology.

Convocation Year

2026

Convocation Season

Spring

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