Page - 20 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

Repetition and habit play a considerable role, and this reveals that the re- sponse of a nervous circuit is never fixed. Plasticity thus adds the functions of artist and instructor in freedom and autonomy to its role as sculptor.19 In the same way that the creativity of the worker is harnessed to the productive needs of capital through flexible working and “neural teams”,20 the imaginative potential of the brain is being locked into a new pattern of consumption defined by streaming platforms. But this interpretation is not a simple argument against the technology as a new form of enslavement or the emergence of what Ber- nard Stiegler describes as “spiraling stupidity”,21 for I believe that, at their best, such cultural productions can stimulate thoughts beyond a banal repetition of the same and, at the very least, they carry traces of past formations of socially transformative thinking about the future. The viewers’ habitual engagement with such creative work is also driven by a sense of hope, a belief in the possibil- ity of developing a different existence within this world, and although no longer explicitly defined in religious terms, this desire echoes religion’s patterns and structures. Mr Robot, a fictional work, positions the central character, Elliot, as essentially dynamic, someone whom we see oscillating between hope and de- spair, something articulated most clearly in his hallucinatory dialogue with the imaginary manifestation of his dead father. The strength of the show, as an ex- ploration of the pressures exerted on the subject by technological transforma- tion, comes from its staging of the instability of the relational self, an on-screen unfolding of a different and challenging type of subjectivity, one driven to the edge by the parallel forces of escalating hyperconnection and intensifying isola- tion. It draws attention to the necessity for habit as a strategy for navigating the increasingly complex world whilst simultaneously undermining the ontological and epistemological foundations that emerge, as these coping strategies be- come yet opportunities for further exploitation. At this point we can consider whether the defining event for the series, the system re-set initiated by the data wipe, is more an act of wishful thinking than an authentic expression of hope. As Ola Sigurdson writes: For hope to be hope, however, and not only wishful thinking, it is imperative that the discontinuity with what has come before is acknowledged, or in other words, that the darkness and despair of our current situation is acknowledged.22 Elliot is clear about the alienated and degraded nature of the contemporary world and is seemingly offered the chance to be involved in an act that will be “the biggest incident of wealth distribution in history … the largest revolution 19 Malabou 2008, 24. 20 Malabou 2008, 43. 21 Stiegler 2015. 22 Sigurdson 2012, 196. 20 | John Lynch www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 15–30