Essere artefici del proprio destino. L'etica protestante e i viaggi nel tempo al cinema

Abstract

The short essay offers an investigation on the recurrent subject of time travels across movie genres in the last 40 years (romantic, thriller, horror, comedy, dystopia), meanwhile analyzing the political unconscious of time travel narratives. It is stated that the escamotage of time travel is a figural way of portraying a new narration on the self, both insisting on the reaffirmation of the protagonists' previous identity and claiming that no breakout from one's past life is actually possible. With the support of Max Weber's considerations on protestant ethic, it is suggested that such a double bound in time travel narratives results in a prison-like fictional world, where no outcome aside from reaffirming oneself is truly conceivable.