Taking Cover From Progress: Michael Winterbottom's Code 46

Abstract

This article examines director Michael Winterbottom's film Code 46 within a tradition of social-political interpretation of film. Code 46 fits uneasily within the science-fiction genre as it is set in a near future of global integration and environmental catastrophe. The ferociously classist social order is governed by a panoptic corporation, The Sphinx, that also regulates gene-environment interactions. The author argues that Winterbottom's film engages with a cross-examination of the widely circulating “Narrative of Progress” as it intersects with globalization. In particular, the narrative and mise-en-scène presents some of the enabling and — with greater emphasis — the dystopic features implicit within liberalism that are channeled through capitalism with its concomitant class striation. Code 46 also engages with the Oedipal narrative that informs the critical gaze that film directs at the future/present and its implications for gender and the internalization of bureaucratic authority.