This article considers Andrew Niccol’s comedic cyberpunk film S1MØNE, a story about the development of computer-generated animated actors. When a has-been Hollywood director secretly uploads a digital actress to save his career, passing her off as real, fans fall for the trick and delight in the newest ‘It girl’. Soon the synthespian’s celebrity eclipses the director’s fame, yet he finds it impossibly difficult to delete the program and get the genie back into the bottle. Niccol’s film is part cinematic fable and part philosophical inquiry into how the use of virtual actors (‘vactors’) in Hollywood cinema will affect filmmakers, actors and audiences.
Bacon-Smith, C. (2000) Science Fiction Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press .
2.
Balsamo, A. (1999) Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women. Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
3.
Baudrillard, J. (1990) Fatal Strategies. New York: Semiotext(e) .
4.
Baudrillard, J. (2000) The Vital Illusion, ed. Julia Witwer . New York: Columbia University Press .
5.
Berardinelli, J. (2002) Review of S1MØNE. URL (consulted June, 2006): http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/s/simone.html
6.
Brady, M. (2006) ‘How Digital Animation Conquered Hollywood’ , Wired (14 March): 119-127 .
7.
Bukatman, S. (1993) Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
8.
Colacello, B. (1999) Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up. Lanham, MD: Cooper Square Press/Rowman & Littlefield .
9.
Coyne, R. (1999) Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
10.
Crafton, D. (1993) Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
11.
Darley, A. (2000) Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. New York: Routledge .
12.
Dery, M. (1996) Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century. New York: Grove Press .
13.
Disch, T. M. (2000) The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World. New York: Touchstone .
14.
Doane, M. A. (1991) Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge .
15.
Doane, M. A. (2000) ‘Technophilia: Technology, Representation and the Feminine’, in G. Kirkup (ed.) The Gendered Cyborg, pp. 110-121. New York: Routledge .
16.
Ebert, R. (2002) Review of S1MØNE, 23 August. URL (consulted June, 2006): http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20020823/REVIEWS/208230304/1023
17.
French, P. (2002) Review of S1MØNE . The Observer, Sunday 27 October. URL (consulted June, 2006): http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Critic_Review/Observer_review/0,,820037,00.html
18.
Gibson, W. (1984) Neuromancer. New York: Ace .
19.
Gibson, W. (1997) IDORU. New York: Penguin Group .
20.
Grady, P. (2002) Review of S1MØNE. URL (consulted June, 2006): http://www.reel.com/movie.asp?MID=133790&buy=closed&Tab=reviews&CID=13%23tabs
21.
Haraway, D. J. (1985) ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’ , Socialist Review9: 65-107 .
22.
Hayles, N. K. (1999) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
23.
Hiltzik, M. A. and Pham, A. (nd) ‘Synthetic Actors Guild’. URL (consulted June, 2006): http://www.simplytaty.com/broadenpages/synthetic.htm
24.
Holman, L. B. (1995) Puppet Animation in the Cinema: History and Technique. London: Tantivy Press .
25.
Holtzman, S. (1998) Digital Mosaics: The Aesthetics of Cyberspace. New York: Touchstone .
26.
Ihde, D. (2002) Bodies in Technology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press .
27.
Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
28.
Kanfer, S. (2000) Serious Business: The Art and Commerce of Animation in America from Betty Boop to ‘Toy Story’. New York: Scribner/Da Capo Press .
29.
Kuhn, A. (ed.) (1999) Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema. London: Verso .
30.
Landon, B. (2002) ‘Synthespians, Virtual Humans, and Hypermedia: Emerging Contours of Post-SF Film’, in V. Hollinger and J. Gordon (eds) Edging Into the Future: Science Fiction and Contemporary Cultural Transformation, pp. 57-74. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press .
31.
Lévy, P. (2001) Cyberculture, trans. R. Bononno. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press .
32.
Linekin, K. (2002) Review of S1MØNE. Eye Weekly. URL (consulted June, 2006): http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_08.22.02/film/simone.html
33.
Maio, K. (2003) ‘Lost in the Land of Fake Fakes’ , Fantasy & Science Fiction104(1): 130-135 .
34.
Manovich, L. (2000) ‘What Is Digital Cinema?’, in P. Lunenfeld (ed.) The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media, pp. 172-197. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
35.
Matrix, S. E. (2006) Cyberpop: Digital Lifestyles and Commodity Culture. New York: Routledge .
36.
Milthorp, R. (1996) ‘Fascination, Masculinity and Cyberspace’, in M. A. Moser and D. MacLeod (eds) Immersed in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, pp. 129-150. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
37.
Morse, M. (1998) Virtualities: Television, Media Art, and Cyberculture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press .
38.
O’Hehir, A. (2002) ‘Review of S1MØNE’, Salon.com URL (consulted June, 2006): http://dir.salon.com/story/ent/movies/review/2002/08/23/simone/index.html?CP=IMD&DN=110
39.
Parisi, P. (1995) ‘The New Hollywood’, Wired 3 December. URL (consulted June, 2006): http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.12/new.hollywood_pr.html
40.
Peppers, C. (1997) ‘“I’ve Got You Under My Skin”: Cyber(sexed) Bodies in Cyberpunk Fictions’, in D. S. Wilson and C. M. Laennec (eds) Bodily Discursions: Genders, Representations, Technologies. New York: SUNY Press .
41.
Quinby, L. (1999) Millennial Seduction: A Skeptic Confronts Apocalyptic Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press .
42.
Rehak, B. (2004) ‘Review of S1MØNE’ , Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies. URL (consulted June, 2006): http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/film/journal/filmrev/films-may-04.htm
43.
Rozen, L. (2002) ‘Review of S1MØNE’ , People58(10): 31-31 .
44.
Ross, A. (1991) Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Limits. London: Verso .
45.
Spielberg, S. (Dir.) (2002) AI: Artificial Intelligence. Warner Bros/Dreamworks .
46.
Springer, C. (1996) Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age. Austin: University of Texas Press .
47.
Sobchack, V. (1987) Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press .
48.
Springer, C. (1998) ‘The Pleasure of the Interface’, in P. Hopkins (ed.) Sex/Machine: Readings in Culture, Gender, and Technology, pp. 484-500. Bloomington: Indiana University Press .
49.
Sterling, B. (1986) Introduction, Burning Chrome. New York: Ace .
50.
Theweleit, K. (1992) ‘Circles, Lines and Bits’, in J. Crary and S. Kwinter (eds) Incorporations, pp. 257-263. New York: Zone .
51.
Travers, P. (2002) ‘Review of S1MØNE’ , Rolling Stone (904): 79-79 .
52.
Turkle, S. (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster .
53.
UPI News Service (2005) ‘Spielberg Sees Virtual Actors Coming’, 19 June. URL (consulted June, 2006): http://www.realitytvworld.com
54.
Wolmark, J. (ed.) (1999) Cybersexualities: A Reader on Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press .
