Imagining Artificial Intelligence as Sentient Synthetic Anthropomorphs and Their Possible Future Relations with Humans: Representation and Form and Style in Popular Postmillennial American and British Fictional Film and Television.

Kidd, Abby (2023) Imagining Artificial Intelligence as Sentient Synthetic Anthropomorphs and Their Possible Future Relations with Humans: Representation and Form and Style in Popular Postmillennial American and British Fictional Film and Television. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

The twenty-first century has been a significant time for artificial intelligence (AI), with a number of key developments in the field changing the world as it was once known. Capturing the cultural zeitgeist, popular postmillennial American and British fictional film and television have produced a number of AI narratives during this time, and are two of the foremost ways that the public is exposed to AI, thus, signalling their importance as cultural artefacts for examination within academia. This thesis draws upon a sample of these texts as case studies, and using close textual analysis, foremostly underpinned by narrative theory, genre theory, and star studies, examines how elements of fictional film and television form and style affect the representation of AI in popular postmillennial American and British fictional film and television, specifically in the imagined form designated by this thesis as ‘sentient synthetic anthropomorphs’ (SSAs). Chapters on SSAs in complex narrative television, their escape from the exclusive purview of the science fiction (SF) genre, their repeated portrayal by a particular Hollywood star actor, and their depiction in the children’s SF film, point to the original and significant intervention of this research project, and draw upon, and are complementary to, an existing body of (inter)disciplinary literature from within and across the humanities and sciences fields. Principally, however, this thesis is an intervention within film, television and media studies, which aims to stimulate further productive dialogues about the representation of AI in popular American and British fictional film and television and beyond, drawing attention to the ways in which elements of form and style might be utilised to produce diverse and engaging AI narratives, contributing to their future vitality and longevity among a range of audience constituencies, as actual AI technologies continue to develop and progress.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies (former - to 2024)
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	01 Nov 2023 13:56
Last Modified:	31 Aug 2024 01:38
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/93526
DOI:

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