La Ilusión Persistente: Diálogos entre la Ciencia Ficción y el Campo Cultural by Silvia G. Kurlat Ares

Abstract

639 BOOKS IN REVIEW Undermining hegemonic masculinity is also the subject of the first half of the fourth chapter. It further considers the role that typically marginalized characters play in sf cinema. Kac-Vergne addresses some of the problems with the theory of hegemonic masculinity by examining black male antagonists: the Predator in Predator 2 (1990) and Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) in Demolition Man (1993). The author argues that these characters are positive depictions of “black violence as a form of resistance and an assertion of power by the disenfranchised over a ‘civilisation’ always defined as white” (134). The chapter’s strength is, once again, its clear development of the volume’s thesis. I greatly appreciate the discussion of Demolition Man, a film that deserves more praise than it has so far received. Not all black male stars in sf action cinema resist hegemonic masculinity, however. In an fascinating reading of Will Smith’s sf cycle, Kac-Vergne asserts that his character’s “safe” blackness, as portrayed in I, Robot (2004), and his display of hegemonic masculinity in After Earth (2013), highlight the ways in which black heroes “tend to integrate into the system and assimilate its values whereby empowerment comes from material success and the domination of others” (155). Kac-Vergne concludes her fourth chapter by noting that Smith’s characters, complicit with hegemonic masculinity, are lonely at the top—contemporary sf cinema is almost exclusively populated by whites. Thus Smith’s vehicles are a step backward for sf action cinema’s politics, as in the author’s conclusion in the third chapter about the roles women play in this genre. Due to the radically disparate themes, stars, and plots of contemporary sf cinema, Kac-Vergne does not make many strong conclusions about overcoming hegemonic masculinity, although her analyses tend to suggest that some films attempt it. Nevertheless, the author’s evidence and arguments clearly indicate the role hegemonic masculinity plays in this period of film history. At first, I was concerned by Kac-Vergne’s decision not to introduce the theory of hegemonic masculinity in detail in the Introduction. As the chapters progress, however, the author gives us a nuanced account of that theory and we are able to understand its implications through her discussion of the films. This said, the book is of more interest to film studies scholars than to gender studies scholars as it lacks a critical engagement with the field of masculinities studies (however exceptional the author’s use of hegemonic masculinity theory may be). One glaring oversight is that while Masculinity and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema provides a breadth of analyses, it largely relies on action cinema characters at the expense of the men and women who do not resort to physical confrontations in other feature films (e.g., Moon [2009] and Her [2013]). But this shortcoming does not detract from this very readable and insightful volume. With Kac-Vergne’s study in hand, the field of masculinity and sf cinema studies is well poised to tackle films in the next era of sf blockbusters.—Troy Michael Bordun, Concordia University and Trent University An Impossible Good Book. Silvia G. Kurlat Ares. La Ilusión Persistente: Diálogos entre la Ciencia Ficción y el Campo Cultural. Pittsburgh, PA: Insituto Internacional de Cultura Iberoamericana, 2018. 430 pp. $30.00. 640 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) Silvia G. Kurlat Ares’s La Ilusión Persistente appears in the NUEVO SIGLO [New Century] series published by the prestigious Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, founded in Mexico in 1938 but currently based at the University of Pittsburgh. This information is pertinent to introduce an extremely ambitious volume that intends to bridge different cultural strata, but that is aimed for the most part at a highly specialized readership possibly more familiar with Latin-American culture than with science fiction. Kurlat, an independent scholar with an extensive CV, has taught at Johns Hopkins University, George Mason University, and the Universidad de Buenos Aires; she is also the editor of the forthcoming Latin American Science Fiction Studies Companion (Peter Lang). She is extremely well-positioned to connect the English-language field of science fiction and her native Argentinean context, which...