Silicon Valley as Cult? Mystifying and Demystifying Surveillance Capitalism in Alex Garland’s Devs (2020)

Abstract

Alex Garland’s recent sf mini-series Devs (2020) has been acclaimed by critics and online commentators, with most praises (and criticisms) usually focusing on both its cinematography and its philosophically charged themes. In an attempt to reassess and to nuance that popular excitement, this paper seeks to analyse the series as a deeply ambivalent sf narrative of cognitive estrangement, one whose main thematic object is the so-called “surveillance capitalism” of Silicon Valley corporations. Particularly, Devs narrates the struggles of a lone mathematician, Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno), against her employer, the San Franciscan company Amaya, which is led by its eccentrically megalomaniac founder, Forest (Nick Offerman). As one of the company’s R&D sections (called DEVS) is secretly building a predictive quantum computer –one apparently capable of accurately extrapolating in all directions of time-space–, the series dwells upon the extremities and the violence used by the Amaya corporation in trying to prevent any leaks of information related to such project. In paying attention to this narrative as well as to its audio-visual aesthetics, my argument is that the series both mystifies and demystifies surveillance capitalism, simultaneously subverting hegemonic discourses, yet falling into their ideological trappings. This ambivalence seems especially patent in the representation of said quantum computer: this is a technological novum which on the one hand critically illustrates the system’s drive towards total domination, and on the other hand fetishizes itself, since it is visualised as a quasi-divine source of devotion for viewers, evoking the sense of a technological sublime. Thus, this paper will examine the series with special attention to this dialectic of mystification and demystification, whereby Devs may be described –although in a relatively simplifying manner– as both an sf critique of Silicon Valley’s cultish tendencies, and as a cultish re-mystification of Silicon Valley technologies.