Literary Criticism of Ethics, Buddhism, and Hollywood SF Films: Freedom from Subjectivity in The Matrix and Interstellar

This paper explores the aesthetic and philosophical values of SF films made in Hollywood, The Matrix series and Interstellar in particular, in link with contemporary literary criticism of postmodern ethics and Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy of perfect emptiness. The pre-originary alterity of the wholly heterogeneous Other is first discussed as a solution to the problem of binary opposition inherent in representational thinking mode of Western metaphysics. It was the ethical thoughts of Derrida, Deleuze, Lacan, especially Levinas's thought of the infinite Other and true wisdom, that truly started to illuminate liberty from binary opposition, the form of human subjectivity. In fact, the idea of the Other as the exterior is very close to the issue of the perfect Emptiness taught in Mahāyāna Buddhism, Ch'an/Seon/Zen tradition in particular. This paper claims that we as Eastern scholars should have a synthetic view of literature and SF films with Buddhist teachings. The dimension of the inconceivable is that which SF movies draw our curiosity and imagination about extraordinary subjects. It is demonstrated that the goal of The Matrix trilogy and Interstellar is to let us to glimpse the Other, Emptiness, or perfect freedom beyond the binary opposition that forms the self.