In recent years, a distinct and unsettling but necessary theme has crept into our TV screens and cinema: the fear of replacement. Across a variety of stories – exploring doppelgängers, clones and the existential quandaries of AI – films and shows are grappling with a growing anxiety about identity, in a world that increasingly values productivity above all else. And if we’re not the most efficient model, are we bound to be replaced?

Films like The Last Showgirl or A Complete Unknown explored the feeling of art moving on without you – an important topic as independent movies struggle to get made, in a time where big budget blockbusters, franchises and remakes dominate cinema.

In the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Dylan’s decision to “turn electric” sends purists like Pete Seeger and the Newport Folk Festival fanatics into a tailspin, fearing their beloved artform is being pushed aside. Meanwhile, in The Last Showgirl, Pamela Anderson’s Shelly confronts what will happen to her, as the last topless revue on the Vegas strip is set to close, and she may be too old to find another job as a performer.

The idea of ageism and women fearing being replaced obviously fuelled one of last year’s most acclaimed films, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance took the beauty sector’s fear-mongering about ageing and Hollywood’s obsession with youth, beauty, and profitability to an extreme. It showed how the industry – and society more generally – leaves little room for older women to continue thriving.

The Substance

The fact that Demi Moore lost out on a well-deserved Oscar to 25-year-old Mikey Madison felt like an unfortunate meta continuation of the film’s themes.Hollywood’s treatment of women as interchangeable, with youth as the ultimate currency, perpetuates a pervasive fear of invisibility that becomes even more intense as time marches on. But it’s not just younger girls that women now have to fear.

In Companion, Drew Hancock’s fun, twisty sci-fi thriller exploring AI robot girlfriends, or sexbots, the director addresses the tension between AI robot Iris and human woman Kat. The latter has been taught to use her beauty and desirability to her advantage – but when confronted with a robot who men can literally design and control, Kat recognises a new threat of replacement.

That threat is also being examined on the small screen, as Severance continues its mind-bending exploration of how mysterious company Lumon is using technology, and possibility cloning, to create the ultimate form of worker.

At the core of these stories lies a profound cultural obsession: the fear that our identities, our very existences, are ultimately replaceable. And sadly, the fear feels understandable, even wise. In a world dominated by technological advancement, this anxiety is often cast in the shadow of AI’s growing role in replacing human labour.

The threat is existential: AI is poised to perform tasks traditionally carried out by people, from creative pursuits to the most mundane jobs, even to act as romantic partners. The fear that technology will render us obsolete is palpable, and it’s no longer confined to the blue-collar worker; even the cultural icons we revere find themselves subject to this looming replacement.

In the arts, this theme becomes even more pronounced. We’re not just concerned with the loss of human labour, but with the erosion of culture itself. Will art become a commodity driven by profitability rather than authenticity?

The fear of being replaced is a feature, not a bug, of capitalism. As Amber Husain’s Replace Me explores, neoliberalism thrives on the exploitation of this very fear: the fear that we, as individuals, are disposable.

In Husain’s analysis, this isn’t just an economic issue; it’s a psychological one, too. We live in an era where even our most intimate and personal identities are commodified. By shining a light on the very real threat of replacement, these films and shows invite us to confront what it means to be truly ‘human’ in a world that increasingly values automation over authenticity. They ask us: if we’re all replaceable, what, then, is left of the self?

The answer may lie not in resisting replacement, but in redefining the very idea of what it means to be human, in a world that’s increasingly preoccupied with efficiency over individuality. We may have to start exploring and embracing what makes us truly irreplaceable, which is our beautiful, flawed humanity, and our connections to each other – and be very wary of those who devalue those qualities.

Elon Musk recently told Joe Rogan that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy” – a too-extreme-for-satire statement that obviously underlies every business and political decision he and the Trump administration are now making. If you don’t value people, everyone can be replaced. Which should be a rallying cry to replace them with leaders who actually care about humanity.