From: Michael Lee Bowling (mlbowli1@iupui.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 02 1998 - 13:37:54 MST
On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Gregory Sullivan wrote:
> >Can you think of short scenes from movies or TV that would illustrate
> >humans transforming? (Or images good for other sections such as on
> >cryonics, nano, AI, uploading, etc.)
>
> I believe there is a scene in the movie Star Wars in which a character's
> hand is cut off with a light saber. (Luke Skywalker might be the
> character.) In a later scene the character is depicted exercising a new
> biomechanical prosthesis which replaces the hand. I have not seen this
> movie in years so I do not recall the details.
Recall in _Return of the Jedi_ when Luke meets Ben's ghost. Ben says that
Luke's father, Attican (sp?), ceased to exist when he was swayed over to
the dark side. Of Darth Vader, Ben says, "He's more machine than man--
twisted and evil." At the end of _Jedi_, a berserking Luke cuts off
Vader's saber hand, and low!! it is artificial!
Luke looks at his own prosthetic hand and realizes that he was becoming
like his father-- more machine than man, spiraling enraged into the evil
of the Dark Side. When I saw it in the theater last summer, I found this
movie to be very un-transhuman b/c of this and other subtlties (ie. reliance
on "the Force" aka Faith, as a source of
guidence) ruined the whole Star Wars mystique left over form my childhood.
Michael Bowling
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