Abstract This thesis traces the process of an ongoing trivialization of human bodies in (post-)modern societies from the perspective of cinematic representations. From mechanical to cybernetic prostheses of human bodies, there is a growing tendency to prosthesize the surfaces of bodies. The sophistication of visual technologies has marginalized physicality and invested human bodies with optical illusions. Being ambushed with visual images, postmodern culture has been limited to a fixed gaze and formulated into a series of visual spectacles. Accordingly, in the first chapter, I am going to examine how the transformation of ontological status of human flesh has taken place in fin-de-siecle France by means of newly invented cinematic technologies. In the second chapter, I am going to explore how the transcendent power of cinematography is able to immortalize physical bodies in a modern way and construct a perfect body without organs of commodities. The splendid visual media are capable of interpenetrating the viewer and mechanized images, reality and representation. The capitalist’s visual culture has constructed a detached sphere which is apart from our living reality, and yet, paradoxically, interchangeable with our material world. The third chapter accounts for pure exposure of human bodies in the representations of cyborg figures. The fourth chapter is organized around several sections of discussions about the virtual body in hyperreality. This chapter offers a critique of Andy and Larry Wachowski’s film, The Matrix, to illustrate how a computer-generated world, a more-real-than-real virtuality, has totally taken over the real world in which human bodies become slaves of the digital media. Moreover, with VR prostheses, the rapid proliferation of virtual space has made possible the ultimate transcendence of physical reality.
