Anxious technophilia disorder
symptoms of anxiety created through the love and consumption of modern technology
Ballet mécanique is a 1924 film made by Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy1. Many believe this film is ‘the definitive avant-garde film”2 of the early 1920s. There is no straightforward narrative in the film or apparent protagonist - except for maybe the woman on the swing named Kiki. The images are haunting and startling with equally vibey music by George Antheil. For me, it is more of a poetic film where images contrast with one another, leaving the viewer tense, sad, and empty. Kiki is a stylized and delicate-looking woman in a fairy-like dress with fashionable yet tiny drawn-on lips of the 20s. She swings on a swing set in what looks like a garden. Instead of being happy, childlike, and free, she is upside down (or at least the camera POV is, so the world is a bit topsy-turvy). There are spinning mechanical objects, baubles, and pseudo effects, which are dizzying. Kiki, with her eerie smile, frightens and fascinates me in almost the same way I feel when looking at too many TikTok videos. It is like I am making a joke, but I am just saying I get it.
Lately, I have been thinking about a term I kind of made up called Anxious Technophilia Disorder, and no, it is not in the DSM-V-TR. This term refers to symptoms of anxiety created through the love and consumption of modern technology and how it plays out in our culture on the female body in terms of stress, estrogen, and femininity. I know it seems like a lot, but Michel Benamou initially coined the term anxious technophilia in the 1970s to describe the anxiety created by modern technology as seen through the female body (Shingler, 2023).3 Technophilia is derived from the Greek technē, which is "art/ artifact, skill and understanding," and philos, for "love"). It refers to the love generated by using technology. This imaginary but possibly real disorder, I think, could be particularly vulnerable in women and girls.
The idea of anxiety stemming from technology is not new, but in every generation, it plays out differently as technology changes. The concept of the machine has always been closely bound up with ideas of sex, gender, and reproduction. Leanna Richardson says in her essay, “The Modern Robot and the Postmodern Cyborg: The Post-Human as an Image of Anxiety” (2012):
We are living in a technological age. In the western world, our daily use of and contact with technology is decidedly unavoidable. In many ways, our gadgets, devices, computers, modems, cords, batteries, phones, and GPS systems are items of functional convenience. But this convenience easily evolves into a dependence, in which the human being feels the significant absence of technology when left without one of these devices. At times this dependence makes us uneasy. While we are happy with the shortcuts and time saved by digital grocery lists or voice-controlled day planners, for example, we are also afraid of our inability to function efficiently without them. This is clearly illustrated by the sheer panic experienced by the owner of a smart phone upon realizing that it has been left at home. Suddenly cut off from the internet, digital maps, and instant messages, a person without her iPhone struggles to answer questions, find recipes, navigate highways, and interact with other people. Her day has become scattered and without clear intention. And suddenly, she has lost the constant sense of connection and interaction created by this small device. Our dependence upon technology goes even deeper than these superficial needs and wants, sometimes claiming responsibility for the very breath in our lungs as a ventilator, or the beating of our hearts as a pacemaker. In looking backwards at our technological journey, from cavemen to the wielders of pocket-sized super computers, there are turning points and periods of rapid development. In examining these moments we can see that this level of efficiency came with many anxieties. The very idea of efficiency has roots in modernity, when production was revolutionized by the onslaught of advanced machinery and the streamlining of time and space it allowed. Yet, with each new invention that harbors hope for eliminating an inconvenience comes the potential for complication.
A recent psychological study found that femininity, as a trait, actually plays a part in anxiety (Farhane-Medina et al., 2022). Masculinity, and not femininity,4 is a protective factor for anxiety. People who are socialized as dependent, fearful, passive, and obedient in their upbringing are at a higher risk for anxiety. Of course, this is all in the context of other stressors such as genetics, sex hormones, environmental factors, and the brain. However, the idea that femininity was connected to being a risk factor in anxiety jarred me. Does socialization cause anxiety? In Ballet mécanique, is Kiki crazy because she is feminine, and is the woman lugging the flour up the stairs and exerting “masculine” traits free from anxiety? Should I lug some flour up the stairs instead of looking at social media? See where I am going?
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