Doubles in a Science Fiction Screenplay and Film: Alexander Payne's Downsizing as a Case Study in Doubling and Duality

Abstract

Doubles in a Science Fiction Screenplay and Film:Alexander Payne's Downsizing as a Case Study in Doubling and Duality Laura L. Beadling (bio) Introduction Doubles have long been a fascination for all forms of cultural representations, from novels and poetry to films and graphic novels. From Dostoevsky's novella The Double to Anne Sexton's poem "The Other" on the high side and films like Multiplicity (1996) and Dave (1993) on the low side, doubles and doppelgangers are everywhere in art. As Gordon E. Slethaug notes, "[t]he roots of the tradition of the double are very deep indeed and go back to the first written records, and perhaps even earlier" (100), managing to be both "very ancient" and a "very contemporary phenomenon" (106). Doubles are also a subject that appears in many genres, although some genres may be more amenable to the theme than others. Certainly psychological thrillers like Vertigo (1958), Dead Ringers (1988), and Black Swan (2010), to name only a few, show how easily the idea of doppelgangers and doubles can be woven into that genre. Likewise, science fiction has a long and rich history of using doubles and duality as subject and theme. This appears in some of the earliest work in the genre, like Frankenstein—of which Aija Ozolins notes that the "motif of a second self-constitutes the chief source of the novel's latent power" (104)—and in classic novels that are still being revisited in various media like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which [End Page 53] has recently been made into several movie adaptations, graphic novels, young adult retellings, and video games. In particular, science fiction literature and especially film has a rich tradition of doubling in terms of size. Consider Gulliver's Travels and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in literature and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Fantastic Voyage (1966), Fantastic Planet (1973), Innerspace (1987), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), and Ant-Man (2015) in film. J. P. Telotte analyzes Forbidden Planet (1956) not only because it uses duality and doubles extensively but also because it demonstrates "more generally" the issue of doubling "as it surfaces throughout our science fiction films." As a film full of various kinds of duality and doubles, Telotte argues, Forbidden Planet can be read as a commentary on the use of this trope in much of science fiction and, in particular, the "double vision" of the simultaneous lure and threat of technology (26). This is also clearly seen in Alexander Payne's Downsizing (2017), in which the scientific process of downsizing is proposed as a solution for resource depletion and overpopulation but also causes its own woes (as is customary for any new technology in a science fiction film). Frank Dietz notes that many scholars identify psychology as the best tool for analyzing doppelgängers and doubles in literature and film, and that approach generally sees doubles as "a projection of repressed aspects of the psyche." Dietz goes on to argue that this critical lens is "insufficient for the field of science fiction" because the genre is founded on a presumption that science can create narrative worlds in which "the existence of doubles is literal fact" (210). Thus, psychology loses its explanatory hold on the trope of doubling and duality in this generic context. Alexander Payne's screenplay (written with his longtime writing partner Jim Taylor) and film Downsizing (2017) takes advantage of this presumption by depicting a scientific breakthrough that allows people to shrink themselves to one-fifth their original size. This in turn creates a mirrored set of societies, big and little. In addition, it is this same breakthrough that allows a tribe of shrunken humans to survive a global environmental disaster that makes life on the surface of the planet untenable, although this storyline is much more developed in the screenplay version than in the theatrical release of the film. Two doubles are of particular interest: the doubled societies of the big and the little, [End Page 54] which is included in both film and screenplay, and—in the screenplay only—the doubles between the present-day main characters and the legendary figures of the future tribe of smalls...