Blurring Posthuman Identities: The New Version of Humanity Offered by Bicentennial Man

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the 1999 film version of Isaac Asimov<s iThe Bicentennial Manj (1976), a film that reflects the changing status of the dichotomy human/non-human in our culture. The idea of blurring the human body boundaries has become one of the most repeated and successful subject matters of the science-fiction genre, a subject especially attractive in a time that some critics have defined as ipost-humanj. Starting from Norbert Wiener theories we will see different approaches to the idea of the cyborg and the ipost-humanj, which will help us to understand the changing relationship between machine, robot and cyborg in Bicentennial Man (1999). We will analyse in which ways the film answers the question: what does it mean to be human in a posthuman world?