Getting Above Herself: Re-envisaging the Sublime in Gravity

This paper will consider the visions of transcendence and the sublime offered in Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron, 2013). Writing on the genre of the science fiction film frequently notes the deployment of the Kantian mathematical sublime in filmic depictions of the infinite vastness of space. For Kant, the sublime is a state of ‘mental agitation’ arising from the failure of the imagination: ‘our imagination strives to progress towards infinity, while our reason demands absolute totality as a real idea and so [the imagination] … is inadequate to that idea.’ (1987: 101, 106). However, failure is recuperated as a demonstration of man’s ‘supersensible vocation’ – ‘a feeling that the mind has a vocation that wholly transcends the domain of nature’ (1987: 128). This paper will consider the ways in which Gravity both evokes and moves away from a Kantian model in which the failure of the imagination is followed by a reassertion of mastery. Feminist philosophers, notably Christine Battersby, have argued that Kant’s model of transcendence centres on a male subject who is able to attain the ‘right’ formation of pure reason (2007). Battersby traces the ways in which women are excluded from the sublime and develops an alternative model of ‘female sublime’, which offers narratives of transcendence that are not based on mastery. This paper will consider the philosophical impact of Gravity ’s presentation of the visual vocabulary of the Kantian sublime alongside a female astronaut (Ryan Stone) who is the mother of a child who has died. The incommensurability of danger and women’s generative role (encompassing both reproduction and child-care) recalls Kant’s reasons for excluding women from the sublime. The paper will demonstrate that the film’s narrative – Ryan’s journey back to earth – and characterisation – a protagonist who is both astronaut and mother – draw together aspects from the female and traditional sublimes thereby creating a profound, ambiguous and conflicted text.