Molecular Terror: Medical Vision, Biopolitics, and Visceral Effects in Contemporary Cinema

Many subfields in the humanities, from biopolitics to queer theory to ecocriticism, converge on the “the molecular” as an important site of subjectivity in the 21st century. Molecularization poses a challenge to traditional molar categories of identity since it fractures the body into internal multitudes that have few socially-recognized markers. Although the turn to the molecular helps articulate the changes in agency and power at the smaller and perhaps more pervasive scale than those found in the realms of work, family, and government, these theories rarely, if ever, accounted for how the molecular is imaged. Such theories take the molecular as a given—as an agreed-upon aesthetic object. Yet the tools we use to see the molecular come to shape our understanding of what constitutes it, whether from microscopy, 3D modeling, or bioanimation. “Molecular Terror” argues that what it means to be a subject in the 21st century requires an exploration of the visual tools that refigure the body at a new molecular scale. There is an emerging historical parallel between the new visuality of biological science post-2000, with its focus on molecular movement of live-cell imaging with fluorescent markings, and the increased presence of visual effect shots in cinema that go inside the characters’ bodies to view moving molecules. I turn to popular culture to understand how the films incorporate these technologies into their narratives to depict how medical tools are interpreted by doctors and patients alike. Though they are not large portions of the film, molecular visions often frame a narrative or appear at a crucial moment of transformation to highlight a sudden shift in a character’s development. Molecular images never just show the inside of the body: they act metaphorically, allegorically, and politically; they visualize an interiority that collapses a character’s psychology, identity, and biological make-up into a single image. These images produce paranoid narratives where the very act of rendering the depths of the body accessible makes it more susceptible to mutation and outside influence. This dissertation, therefore, analyzes the pathological emotions produced by medical imaging as much as the pathogens these technologies are designed to combat