Silicon Valley Cinema

Silicon Valley corporations now dominate our daily lives to the extent that many of us now question their ability to determine the direction of human life in the twenty-first century. The 2010s saw Hollywood filmmakers engaging in this very debate. Through a sequence of films ranging from biopics of key Silicon Valley leaders to science fiction action films and whimsical workplace comedies, Hollywood films probed Silicon Valley’s impact on our past, present, and future. Silicon Valley Cinema analyses these films, arguing that they seek to encourage scepticism about our Silicon Valley overlords and have us step back from our immersion in Silicon Valley’s world. Doing so, they suggest, might make our working lives more pleasurable, our world a better place, and might even help us avoid a war with genetically enhanced apes or avert a robot-led apocalypse. Identifies in ‘Silicon Valley Cinema'a recent trend in twenty-first century Hollywood filmReveals how ‘Silicon Valley Cinema'builds upon previous Hollywood trendsAnalyses three distinct subtrends in ‘Silicon Valley Cinema': biopics, films about the workplace, and science fiction action films, all of which are set in Silicon ValleyDemonstrates how this trend interrogates Silicon Valley's development, impact on our present world, and its potential to determine our human futureSilicon Valley corporations such as Facebook, Google, and Apple now dominate our daily lives to the extent that they might even be dictating the entire future of humanity. The 2010s saw a sequence of Hollywood films debate how these corporations achieved this position of dominance.This sequence included biopics of key Silicon Valley figures Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, science fiction action extravaganzas like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Venom, and Terminator: Genisys, the dystopian thriller The Circle, and extended to The Internship and Why Him?, whimsical comedies that warned us of the profound dangers of Silicon Valley capitalism.Silicon Valley Cinema argues that these films undercut the messianic pretensions of our Silicon Valley overlords and encourage us to end our immersion in Silicon Valley's technotopia. Releasing ourselves from Silicon Valley's grip, they suggest, will make our working lives more pleasurable, our world a better place, and might even avert a cataclysmic war with genetically enhanced apes or a robot-led apocalypse. Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1: Precursors 1. Technology and Surveillance in Millennial Hollywood 2. Critiquing Twenty-First-Century Capitalism 3. Hollywood’s Bay Area Part 2: Real Genius 4. The Silicon Valley Biopic 5. Constructing the Silicon Valley Icon Part 3: Silicon Valley’s Dystopian Utopia 6. Technology Solutionism and the World of Work 7. Dystopian Diversity Part 4: Silicon Valley’s Evil Geniuses 8. Posthumanity and Masculinity 9. The Turbo-capitalist Tech Bro Conclusion: Why Him? and the Dialectics of Silicon Valley Cinema Bibliography Index