Strange Days

Strange Days compares to Johnny Mnemonic; both movies reverse gender roles. In this case, Ralph Finnes is the desperate and destitute heart broken victim who is repeatedly saved and rescued by Angela Bassett.

Curt Holman comments that Strange Days also belongs in the genre of cyberpunk but believes that "It's a cliché in cyberpunk films for the female leads to be better fighters than the men." Similarly, Strange Days is set in the future, on and around New Year's Eve, 1999. There is general terror about the "fin de siecle." In this sci-fi, Ralph Finnes, an ex-cop, sells "playback" and plays the con man. "Playback" is the technological break-through destablizing the status quo; it consist of tapes that through the use of a headset, one can tape and relive events in virtual reality. The technology centers around identity and memory and as "Mace" (Angela Bassett) admonishes "Lenny" (Ralph Finnes), "Memories were meant to fade." In this distorted "who done it," Finnes and Bassett struggle to uncover who murdered a civil rights leader and later who maliciously rapes and murders the prostitute/witness to the assassination.

The subplot is a love triangle staged between Finnes, Bassett and "Faith" (Juliette Lewis), a waif-like rock star who has dumped Finnes for more career-enhancing boyfriends. Finnes is addicted to his "playback" videos of Lewis. Notice, the contrast between the bodies of the two women. Lewis is a thin, white prostitute versus Bassett, a strong, built African American woman and single mother. In comparison to Johnny Mnemonic, this movie introduces a conspiracy theory which is complicated by the racial tensions of Los Angeles at the turn of the century. Nevertheless, bodies permeate the screen. Yet, what is "real" and what is "playback?" Finnes describes playback:

This is not like TV only better. This is life. It's a piece of somebody's life. Pure and uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex. You're there. You're doing it, seeing it, hearing it... feeling it. (Strange Days)

Bodies, particularly the bodies of the women become the common currency between the two spheres, revealing that the physicalness of the body is not so, well, physical.

Prostitution parallels playback. Both reduce bodies to the status of commodified objects. Furthermore, as these film clips evidence, Finnes manipulates the gaze. In this case, it is not only the one who wears the headset who gets to record the virtual reality, but the one who ultimately, posesses and views the tape has the power. Nevertheless, this is the power exacted by a malicious and sick form of violence against women, a position into which the possessor/viewer is forced. Rather than maintain that the one "in" the body is victim, everyone with the gaze is victimized in this movie.

Introduction

Johnny Mnemonic

Virtuosity

The Net

Copycat