Although some (including Esposito) have claimed that biopolitics is about the direct political manipulation of life, a careful analysis shows that biopolitical interventions are always mediated—that is, like other forms of ideology, as Žižek has argued, they always require a fantasy to sustain them, whether they are public service billboards or Hollywood films. Understanding the essential falsity of biopolitical ideology is not enough, however, to understand its hold over the viewer; one must also understand the fantasy and the subject they inhabit. In this seminar, we’ll explore some theories of biopolitics as well as theories that attempt to explain the fascination that screen fantasies hold over us in the service of the preservation, maintenance, enhancement and exploitation of life for political power (biopower, in Foucault’s terms). Crucial to these fantasies are images of power, gender, sexuality and sexual orientation, technology and its relationship to the body, surveillance and voyeurism, torture, and much more.