Scientific Journal of Pazhuhesh-e Honar

With the expansion of new technologies and the increasing fusion of the body with machines, the concept of embodiment has undergone significant transformation in recent decades, making the relationship between identity, power, and technology a central issue in cultural studies and critical theory. This article seeks to explore how the cyborg body is represented in the science-fiction techno-scientific cinema and what capacities it holds for reproducing or resisting systems of domination. The main research question is framed through an analysis of four contemporary films to determine whether cyborg bodies merely extend mechanisms of control and power discourses, or whether they also enable the redefinition of subjectivity and the subversion of established orders. The aim of the study is to examine how the cyborg body is represented in four key films of the genre, showing how these hybrid bodies, by disrupting binary oppositions such as human/machine, male/female, and nature/culture, provide the potential to dismantle normative systems and offer new forms of embodiment. The research adopts a qualitative methodology based on critical discourse analysis, focusing on the representation of the body and power relations across the narrative, visual, and linguistic dimensions of the films. The four selected films—The Creator, The Machine, Ex Machina, and THX 1138—are analyzed in relation to the design of the body, their social roles, and their relationship with power and technology, within the theoretical frameworks of Donna Haraway’s cyborg feminism, Foucault’s concept of the disciplined body and power, and Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra. The findings suggest that although the cyborg body emerges within power structures, in many cases it transforms into a resistant, self-aware subject capable of redefining the boundaries of the body and agency