Fake Flesh: Black Mirror and Ex Machina

When human flesh first touches synthetic flesh in the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back” (2013), the human recoils, but keeps touching all the same: “You’re so smooth—how are you so smooth?” whispers Martha (Hayley Atwell) to the android simulacra of her dead partner, Ash (Domnhall Gleeson). The android body is framed as both supernatural and technological, …

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Superhumanity: Refiguring the Superhero

Like the urban thoroughfare it’s named after, Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue (2012) contains diverse and highly specific multitudes. It is a…

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