Scene from the movie “Pillow Talk” and from “Hush”.

Much of the stories we tell, science fiction and ancient stories aside, take place in the real world, and in the current real world. Using historical, geographical, cultural, and, in this case, above all else; technological elements current existing.

Instead of building a completely new world – as in “The Lord of the Rings”, or make the story to take place in the future, as in “2001: A Space Odyssey”.

And I was reflecting on how the real-world technological changes affect the range of creative possibilities in the fictional world. The narratives they “create” and “eliminate” – and obviously, these two words are in quotation marks, since fiction, per se, doesn’t depend on such advances or the lack of them

However, I believe that most people like to create works about the realities that they encounter and are confronted on their daily lives, and to use such elements as a background for what they envision. Art doesn’t appear in a disconnected way in the world. Art is made by people like you and me. People who wake up, go to the beach, chat with friends on WhatsApp and express political opinions on twitter. Life imitates art, but art imitates life back. The reality we live in influences the art we create.



Edited scene from the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” from 1961.

I mean, why weren’t stories with modern smartphones, computers, and electronics a common thing in, say, the 1960s? We could have pretended, simulated them. But… it would have sound strange, a film, for example, recorded in such age, taking place in virtually every aspect, in the ‘real’ 60s, however, in a version of such age where there were these modern communicating devices that didn’t exist in the real world at that moment.

It would be unusual because things like cell phones and internet have changed our lives in so many ways, so that, realistically speaking, portraying a version of such era where we have the same culture and customs, but in which, nonetheless, we had these futuristic technologies, would be paradoxical. It would demand from the viewer a great deal of suspension of disbelief, to him simply say: “Okay, I don’t understand how that would make sense, but I will simply accept that this fictional world is this way.”

What happens, of course, is directors and filmmakers who fully embrace futurism and create narratives taking place in distant years where we have fantastic technologies. And this has always happened, from the beginning of the cinema with films like "Metropolis" from 1927, which tackles the question of robotics and of a futuristic society.



The unimaginable technological revolutions that are occurring, and that will occur over the next years, decades and centuries, provide us with new fictional narratives taking place in the actual real world. Plots that were restricted to science fiction stories are now incorporated into reality, and therefore to the real world portrayed in fiction.

Things like body transplants, people living entire lives in virtual realities, spaceships carrying civilizations to colonize planets in other solar systems, and so on. Think of something like “Forrest Gump” meets space elevators in the plot.



One work that makes a very clever use of such technological resources to create narratives is the episode “Shut Up and Dance” from the series “Black Mirror”, which creates a fantastic plot that would have been science fiction 20 years ago.

There is a lot of talk about narrative elements that technology steals from us – suspense and horror stories in which there is a killer or a monster on the loose and in which the protagonist today could easily call for help through his smartphone. However, I believe that such a point of view is surrounded by a certain preconception of ours about the effects of technological changes in this regards.

Just as smartphones and mobile internet “killed” storylines – if you want them to happen in the contemporary real world – the same could be said for the invention of the telephone itself, for the television, the automobile, technologies which have added an element of immediacy and globalization in the real world, and therefore in how it is portrayed in fiction.



Even suspense and supernatural works incorporate technological elements into their narratives, such as “The Ring”, which uses VHS tapes as cursed objects. And with the widespread popularization of the internet and computers in general in recent years we begin to see modern technological elements being incorporated into such narratives. We can see this in films like “Don’t Hang Up”, “Feardotcom”, “Friend Request”, “Unfriended” and “Untraceable”.



Cinema was born in the late 19th century. Today’s ordinary films use technological elements unimaginable to people of that era, things you would not even see in science fiction films from that time. However, many filmmakers deliberately decide to develop the story of his film in an earlier age, not ancient time as “200 years ago”, but… close enough of us to sound similar, though, not so close to having all modern technology currently existing – to add a slight touch of nostalgia.



As in a Greek film I recently saw, called “Attenberg”, which its story could perfectly have happened today, there was no critical element, I believe, of the work that had to take place in the past, nevertheless, the director chose so that the picture took place almost 20 years in the past, in the late 90s. And, in my opinion, one of the reasons for this is due to the fact that every technological invention has a certain “ultra-futuristic” aura surrounding them at the beginning, which goes in the opposite direction if you are trying to portray something more nostalgic.



However, think of a simple invention: the radio. An invention that enabled you to hear someone on the other side of the earth would instantly be considered a futuristic innovation, or perhaps even black magic, for the people of the 18th century.

However, over time, we stop being amazed and dazzled by the existing technologies. We come to see them without this “mega hyper blaster plus” technological aura. They become just tools; an object that emits light and lights the room of your house, a device that allows you to talk to people on the other side of the world, etc, etc…

The other reason, of course, is when the story simply has to take place in ancient times for it to work, when it’s really important that it doesn’t take place in the present days, and I know there is a given degree of subjectivity here, but by “ancient times for it to work” I mean “when the current technological scenario would have a significant impact on the narrative”.

One thing that makes me think a lot is how the present time will be portrayed in fiction in the future. I mean, in general, there is not much difference between the year 1200 and 1300 – perhaps some argue that it is a partiality of mine as a 21st-century citizen, but it is an objective fact that… cultural and technological changes happened at a much slower pace back then, when several decades and centuries went by without profound changes in the way of life.

However, nowadays humanity changes very fast (just compare the world of 2017 with the world of 1997), it is an exponential progress, as the good old Kurzweil would say. In a way that just a current century could provide several profoundly different background periods.