Living in the posthuman network society: mobility and surveillance in “Blackhat”

Abstract

Although not a box office success and with serious flows regarding narrative structure and performance, “Blackhat” (2015) is undoubtedly a film that shows its belonging to a specific context and historical moment: it reflects upon some of the worries, changes and consequences of the combination of new technologies and socio-political events. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the visual and aesthetic mechanisms the film uses to present firstly contemporary changes in communication and secondly present-day worries related to security and the risk society, which have triggered the expansion of surveillance systems. Finally, it will also address the ways through which this new network society affects and is the tool for the construction of new identities while it also changes our perception of reality.

Keywords

• network society
• surveillance
• mobility
• dataveillance
• posthuman
• space
• flows