New Materialities at Play: On the colonization of narratives between humans and non-humans in science fiction platform cinema

Abstract

This article analyzes how streaming platforms colonize and neutralize critical narratives emerging around new post-anthropocentric materialities. The object of study is science fiction films on streaming platforms, specifically the series Sweet Tooth and Black Mirror, understood as cultural devices that represent and modulate the associations between human and non-human actors. Drawing on new materialism and social studies of criticism, two dimensions are examined: (1) the co-optation of ecological discourses in relationships that address interspecies hybridizations, and (2) the instrumentalization of narratives about the human-machine relationship in contemporary technological contexts. The analysis shows how these works, far from offering a transformative perspective on the relationships between humans, nature, and technology, reconfigure critique in an emotional, spectacular, and compatible way, aligned with the logic of cultural capitalism. The concept of "soft critique" is proposed to describe this form of aesthetic and moral deactivation of critique, which transforms posthumanist and ecological narratives into culturally safe and commercially profitable products.

ecological discourse

cinematic narratives

colonization of hybrids

human-machine hybrid

posthumanism