Post-modernity and Posthumanism in “Fresh Kill”
Shu Lea Cheang’s 1994 film Fresh Kill is a work of intersecting commentary — a genre-bending, creative-boundary-blurring piece that takes in elements of science-fiction, political commentary, and queer futurisms. As Claire and Shareen navigate raising their daughter in an increasingly polluted world, we witness corporate greenwashing and propaganda take place in digital spaces and beyond, while Shareen tries to keep a delicate balance by not revealing her relationship with her lover Claire, to her ex-cop father. Put together, these elements draw upon a larger framework of discussion that Cheang, through her ‘media activist’ style of filmmaking, has left to her viewers’ evaluation. I argue that the identity politics in Fresh Kill exhibit manifestations of the intersections between postmodernity and posthumanism. I also question, in Fresh Kill, what ways does Cheang present race, gender, and the body as capable of “realigning” in the changing global culture? (Marchetti 405). To illustrate this, I will draw upon Yusoff’s critique of the Anthropocene and re-orienting studies of geology to understand the delineation between materiality, and how this plays into these concepts (13). Building on this I will use Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto to look at the condensed image of a cyborg, as both imagined and of material reality, as having an effect on the characters in the film (292). With these two concepts I will conduct a close scene analysis to be able to expand on their intersections, and notions of identity in the film. This structure will demonstrate how identity in Fresh Kill becomes a tool to convey both a fantastical and ahead-of-its time empowerment in how the intersection of these identities can be aligned in our digital global culture. Through this writing, I will engage in a series of analyses that looks at how we portray digital technologies in the Anthropocene and the speculative consequences of these portrayals. This work has the potential to inform future studies of the Anthropocene, especially regarding studies of postmodernism and posthumanism in the science fiction genre film.
Postmodernism and Agency
Firstly, understanding postmodernism as a site of border-crossing, or a postcolonial centering of global society, is necessary for a reading of Fresh Kill. As Marchetti writes, the characters live in a multicultural world, and although a great deal of the film’s message and power comes from such distinct characters, the ‘aesthetic problem’ of Fresh Kill makes character identification complex (407). It is not so much a problem as it is a challenge that Cheang takes on, contributing to a New Wave of cinema that draws upon unconventional techniques, such as those identified by Marchetti as “self-reflexivity, intertextuality, elliptical narratives, alienation effect, direct address, and direct quotation” (407). We shall see this more clearly in section three with the close scene analysis, but these techniques work against a certain ‘inertness’ that colonial ontologies have used to operationalize race for the characters in the film (Yusoff 13). In studies of the Anthropocene, Yusoff finds that geology provides an example of the regime that is responsible for “producing both subjects and material worlds” and operationalizes race as an effect of colonial power (13). Her argument builds on the idea that geology marks “a signifier for extraction..[that is responsible for the] transmutation of matter that occurs within that signification” and therefore is capable of transforming matter to be rendered as property (Yusoff 13). In identifying this threshold, the ways in which Cheang has made an active resistance to these grammars in her film becomes more clear. Such a “delineation between agency and inertness” is visible in the contrast between those who live in Staten Island, which has become a dump where Shareen collects garbage, and the recurring image of Orchid Island that appears in the film, and the ‘yuppies’ of the multinational corporation GX. Transnationalism is enacted by projecting images of these various geophysical locations where different races, and kinds of identities exist in one place. In one, a ““fourth world” space of aboriginal people and traditional practices [is] penetrated by commercial tourism and satellite television” and another, supposedly a global economic and cultural site that at the same moment, is on the surface a junk pile (Marchetti 402). Visual representations in the film fantasize an alignment in the postmodern era, where race, as Yusoff puts it, “might be considered as foundational to the production of Global-World-Space” (20). At least, it is foundational to the empowerment of a new global narrative.
Posthumanism and Technology
If race can become operationalized by the grammars of geology, then we must consider the body. Connecting this postmodernist critique to narratives in Fresh Kill is Haraway’s concept of the “the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality” (292). It is a distinctly posthumanist approach to label the cyborg as a “condensed image of the imagined and material reality”, where the moment when such forces are joined together, a transformation is imminent (292). In Fresh Kill, while it may not appear so, there is a linear narrative that strings together the development of Shareen’s character throughout the film. If the ‘cyborg myth’ is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities as Haraway states, then Shareen represents these crossings. She is a woman yet she defies patriarchal norms, of femininity and hereterosexuality. She is a junk forager, and because of this she benefits from the capitalist excess of the GX corporation that creates the waste. Yet her dedication to exposing the corporation’s responsibility for producing toxic fish becomes a potent fusion in what it represents. Comparable is the character Young-Goon, from Park Chan-Wook’s 2006 film I’m a Cyborg but That’s Ok. We see her attempt to navigate life in a mental institution as she believes herself to be a cyborg in a most literal sense. However the film privileges the viewer by hardly portraying any of the clinical staff at the institution, and instead focusing on the patients. We are immersed in their world. The viewer begins to understand why Young-Goon thinks she is a cyborg. It is a story that uses unique ways of finding empathy to connect with one another, in Haraway’s words; “ The political struggle [of the cyborg,] is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point” (295). While there is evidently a power in this struggle, we must also question, is there danger in such possibilities?
Perhaps if we consider the ending of Fresh Kill, Shareen’s transformation becomes increasingly precarious. Technology plays a massive role in the non-linear narrative of Fresh Kill, it serves to surprise the viewer, cause them to question and think about the media and technology and the consequences of its influence on connecting the global culture. In the following scene analysis, we can see how GX throughout the film is juxtapositioned in order to convey their influence. Their power lies in the blurring of the lines, the film's editing does not follow the typical continuity style but cuts between scenes and these moments of corporate propaganda. It takes a critical, engaged viewer to read through these messages. Shareen represents the part of the population that is resistant to this influence, but proves that it is not possible to be fully without. I will demonstrate this further in the following section.
3. Scene Analysis
Twenty-one minutes into Fresh Kill, the viewer is subjected to a montage of corporate messaging. A man recites their mantra: we care. We see a sprout grow, a television screen that reads “power/security”, and a space rocket taking off. The montage ends with a pair of open-palms holding a floating globe, with the GX logo in the centre of the globe. The words “we care” are seen below the image. The spinning GX logo globe then becomes juxtaposed over a satellite dish, as voices flood over one another: “the largest buyout” “a defense contract…” “twenty billion” “GX is gobbling up everything in sight” etc. We see the ACC logo fade into frame, then cut to a shot of a newspaper pile with headlines saying the same. The imagery of transnational corporate exploitation could not be more obvious in this sequence. The montage is followed by a one-shot dialogue between two corporate executives. They wander back and forth in what appears to be a strange art exhibit: the words “neo depression” printed on the wall in the background, and a man or perhaps a wax figure of a man sits inside a shopping cart staring at nothing. The executives are discussing the merger between GX and ACC: “given the large degree of domestic uncertainty, mergers are healthy”. The other man doesn’t understand, why have all different, distinguished brands under one name? “It’s a visionary’s metaphor of our transient culture.” the other replies. He goes on: “the most obvious art of our time.” and “Now! It is time to buy more shares!”. His speech ends with a direct address to the camera: “It’s only weird because we’re wired. Wired, because we’re wayward. Write a song if you’re willing. Nothing’s wrong.” (Cheang Fresh Kill ). This poetic proposal in fact summarizes ideas that are embedded in Fresh Kill. He seems to acknowledge the ‘weirdness’ of the digital society that is overly connected or ‘wired’. But he justifies it for it is a consequence of the inevitable advancement that capitalism employs. As the film goes on, this character and other corporate executives become increasingly incoherent, a side effect of the contaminated fish they’ve been eating. It’s ironic just like the cyborg: it is born from capitalist society. The executives’ static, spoken-word-like delivery is also recognizant of how the image of a cyborg is about consciousness, or at least, its simulation (Haraway 294). His consciousness is seething with indoctrination into the capitalist scheme. Shareen, by contrast, exhibits an anti-GX (anti-capitalist) rhetoric as the film progresses and she discovers her daughter’s sickness. She sees the overwhelming messages on the televisions in the junkyard and attempts to destroy them. But neither is one without the other: by the end of the film, the corporation is not brought to a satisfying demise. Again we return to the image of the cyborg as between imagined and material reality. Race and identity may play into these images, but they are condensed to represent a world that “might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities or contradictory standpoints.” (Haraway, 295). There is inescapable power in the duality of these images.
Conclusion
In interviews, Cheang mentions the notion of “breaking in” throughout the film (Marchetti 409). In many ways, her characters represent the ways in which social reality is capable of breaking the mold, and challenges stereotypes to present a realignment of identities in a changing global culture. They does so by engaging a multicultural attitude of “otherness and difference” as constructors of a post-modernist identity, for women of colour, for queer indentities, and beyond (Marchetti 405). Marchetti articulates this as well: “Cheang’s characters, like Haraway’s cyborgs, promise new configurations and alliances with liberatory possibilities beyond narrow definitions of “identity politics.” (Marchetti 406).
As far as the elements of race and identity in Fresh Kill exhibit manifestations of postmodernity and posthumanism, they also evade analysis. While Fresh Kill presents a realignment of identities in a changing global culture, it more so leads into questions to explore further for research. For example, imagery that even goes beyond the medium of cinema and illustrates the theorizing that Cheang does in terms of how media can be used as a site of activism. Whereas television and computer networks, as well as technology as a whole act as “a site for struggle, disruption, and intervention”, technology in this sense also allows for transnational imagery to exist between places like Taiwan and New York (Marchetti 410). It poses a challenge for analysis that must take into consideration every facet of identity-building and meaning-making. Cinema is a perfect medium for Cheang to explore these intersections, for it relies on the viewers’ subjective experience of the film. With any luck, we’ll continue to see her work inform studies of global technological consequences, well into the twenty-first century.
Works Cited
Cheang, Shu Lea, director. Fresh Kill . ITVS International, 1994.
Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” Manifestly Haraway, 2016, pp. 3–90., https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816650477.003.0001.
Marchetti, Gina. “Cinema Frames, Videoscapes, and Cyberspace: Exploring Shu Lea Cheang's Fresh Kill.” Positions: Asia Critique, vol. 9, no. 2, 2001, pp. 401–422., https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-9-2-401.
Yusoff, Kathryn. “Geology, Race, and Matter.” A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2018, pp. 12–21.
April 13th 2022
