Philosophical Subtexts of the Science Fiction Genre

This article examines the acute problem in 20th-century art — how to create a work of art capable of engaging a mass audience without sacrificing the meaning conceived by the artist — through the lens of two films by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979). This issue became particularly significant for the type of society that emerged in the 19th century, known as ‘mass society’, and reached its peak in the latter half of the last century. This period saw the rise of an ongoing debate surrounding the ‘auteur cinema’ and the figure of the Author in art, whose previously high status began to noticeably waver. This shift was reflected in late theoretical conceptions of art, such as structuralism and post-structuralism. To address this problem, the author employs a linguistic methodology stemming from the ‘linguistic turn’ in the humanities that began in the early 20th century. Analyzing Tarkovsky’s two films, the author utilizes the concepts of ‘language’ (langue) and ‘speech’ (parole). If ‘language’ is a means of achieving optimal communication that considers the interests of both the speaker and the receiver, then ‘speech’ is the expression of a deeply individualized process that remains real even beyond language. It is this latter circumstance that disrupts harmonious communication. This problem emerged with particular acuity in cinema with the advent of the ‘auteur film’. Unsurprisingly, Tarkovsky’s films, where ‘speech’ became dominant, posed difficulties for the mass audience. However, the director’s turn to the science fiction genre can be explained by his desire to utilize not only ‘speech’ but also ‘language’, as genre is a necessary linguistic tool for adequate understanding. The formation of the science fiction genre in literature took place even before the advent of cinema. The science fiction genre, like any other genre, is a component of ‘language’, not ‘speech’. Yet, by resorting to the genre, Tarkovsky does not avoid difficulties, as the realization of his authorial intent creates a problem in the relationship between the visual and the narrative. The article pays special attention to a comparative analysis of Tarkovsky’s films and the American film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick. In the latter, the visual element supplants the literary narrative. Tarkovsky implements an alternative model of the relationship between the visual and the narrative, where the narrative element does not yield to the visual. Essentially, this comparative analysis reveals not only different configurations of the relationship between ‘language’ and ‘speech’ but also different types of mentality. The research was carried out with the support of the Russian Science Foundation grant for small scientific groups No. 24–28–01588 “Creativity of Andrei Tarkovsky as a phenomenon of national and world culture”

Film director · Mass media · Movie theater · Wonder · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction