the ‹becoming flesh› of such a ‹self-invention,› in which the traditional dichotomy of ‹mind› and ‹body› collapses in an unexpected way—and more and more people of both genders are reacting euphorically to the offer of ‹reinventing themselves.› In this sense, movie and pop stars, who like Liz Taylor attempt to avoid the aging of their body with cosmetic surgery, or like Michael Jackson completely transform themselves into an artificial figure, can be considered to be protagonists of «posthumanism,» whose maxim has become the imperative of ‹cyborgization.› [52] This does not, however, mean that they will lose their monstrous traits, which is the promise associated with this imperative: There continues to be something uncanny attached to the manipulation of the human body. This other side of the coin can no longer be solely viewed in the mirror of a science fiction satire such as «Brazil.» The protagonist in this film dreams himself time and again a fantasy world in which he transforms from a weakly average person into a superhero, while due to unsuccessful cosmetic surgery his aging mother mutates into a monster, who in the end cannot be held together by a human contour. [53] In the meantime,

in the eyes of some of his former fans Jackson, whose features are distinctly marked by biomedical operations from pigment bleaching to nose surgery, appears to have become a monster. [54] It is no coincidence that this can be demonstrated by the fact that his outer appearance seems to change between man, woman and child, and that his sexuality is also suspiciously deviant. The ‹interface gender› once more proves to be the focal point of both the phantasmatic as well as the uncanny quality of (self-)creation.