Dystopias are a mainstay of science fiction. It is hard to
convey how much of a change this represents if we look back on the many works of
this genre written during the late 19th century. Of course, utopias
were always a supreme product of the imagination, and the very etymology of the
word refers clearly to this (utopia means no place). But with the optimism of
the Victorian age, we saw works that arose to present us entrancing visions of
the future, fables that seemed to project confidence and assurance and as such were very much a continuation of the narrative of Enlightenment rationalism.
There were works, for example, such as 20,000 Leagues
under the Sea, one of a series of Voyages Extraordinaires (there were over 50 novels published!) that were written by famed French science fiction writer Jules Verne, a popularizer of science who, it must be noted, also incorporated an element of escapism. (According to scholars of Verne, the author had expressed an early wish to become a sailor and see the world, a wish that was never fulfilled.)
There were also works that were more nuanced, those that presented, for example, social programs in visions that sought to reform and correct the excesses of the industrial age. These offered gentle visions of a less nationalistic age, the ultimate return to a new Eden. These works incorporated a utopian urge, evident in works such as William Morris’ Erewhon (“nowhere” spelled backward) and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. This was an innocence in these works that was seemingly at odds with the dynamics of the 19th century, a wish fulfillment that opted for visions of harmony and post-industrial social adaptation, and didn't consider that there might be nightmare scenarios that would be even more alarming than what was already present. This admonitory note would be mined most fruitfully in the enormously influential novels of H.G. Wells, staring with his The Time Machine.
There were also works that were more nuanced, those that presented, for example, social programs in visions that sought to reform and correct the excesses of the industrial age. These offered gentle visions of a less nationalistic age, the ultimate return to a new Eden. These works incorporated a utopian urge, evident in works such as William Morris’ Erewhon (“nowhere” spelled backward) and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. This was an innocence in these works that was seemingly at odds with the dynamics of the 19th century, a wish fulfillment that opted for visions of harmony and post-industrial social adaptation, and didn't consider that there might be nightmare scenarios that would be even more alarming than what was already present. This admonitory note would be mined most fruitfully in the enormously influential novels of H.G. Wells, staring with his The Time Machine.
Elysium is a film
that was released in 2013, directed by the same person who directed the
stimulating film from several years ago, District
9 (Neill Blomkamp). It details yet another dystopia, another scenario of
environmental and social collapse, and as with all dystopias, these works tap
into deep-seated fears in play currently, magnifying them through the act of
accelerated time (the “flash forward” to a world that results if we don’t
correct the problems we see currently). It also echoes many of the scenes and
setup of the seminal 1982 film Bladerunner,
where we had a band of renegades (replicants) who were programmed to die and
who mount a desperate assault on an enclosed and restricted center of power in
a bid to obtain a degree of equality and dignity. Elysium, however, lacks the stylish and evocative film noir
depiction that characterized the Ridley Scot’s film.
It must be said at the outset that the film struck me as
being very heavy-handed. It was very much one-dimensional, in the manner of a
polemic that was fleshed out hurriedly and that made little effort to portray
the complexity of these human characters. Perhaps this was always the
intention, but as audience members we feel very little emotional involvement
with the characters, and they instead strike one as stock figures in service to
political scenarios. One may add, though, that as with all dystopias, there is
a certain visual majesty in catastrophe, a grandeur that stimulates at the same
time that it horrifies us. It is part of the intrinsic fascination that we all
have when viewing the scene of an accident, a mangled car, bloodstains on the
sidewalk, the crimes scenes pictured by the New York photographer Arthur Felig
(WeeGee) in their dark black and white essence, and the grandeur of a ruined
and smoking building. A landscape of death has a certain compelling quality to
it, all the more so if we can afford to be spectators and not actual
participants. Better that it was them and not us, even if we are headed in that
direction.
(The crime photography of WeeGee)
The scenario is that of a ruined Earth 150 years in the
future. Ecological devastation has inevitably resulted from the same voracious
capitalism that has overtaken the Earth in the age of global capitalism, that
age in which the market has taken a new and much more menacing visage. We have
predatory companies that manifest many of the excesses we associate with the
modern age, with exploitative conditions and with little margin for profit,
while heavy investment is made in the security apparatus of the state. Justice
is dispensed by robots (we have one that looks like a vague caricature of the
Jack in the Box restaurant emblem who acts like a parole officer), and most
people on Earth (not in space) have been reduced to living in slum-like
conditions. It would seem to be an evocation of the worst gang-infested barrios
of Los Angeles, with people reduced to sub-employment and forced to rely on the
hope of riding illegal shuttles (the analogue to the trunks of modern cars
where illegal immigrants were transported across the border) to reach Elysium. Decay
and catastrophe, in this film, is one vast East LA, but a dark and distorted
vision of the place, rougher, grimier, but not without a certain level of
community consciousness.
The cityscape is vast and flat for the most part, except for
the cluster of tall skyscrapers that are in states of advanced decay, with
smoking debris. These vast and crumbling buildings can help but remind us almost
of classical ruins, and in the short memory of the current age, of the
devastation and tragedy of the Twin Towers and 911. There are vast bonfires
that send immense plumes of smoke up into the contaminated air, and this couldn’t
help but evoke a memory that placed me back in time. This was the same
spectacle that we Angelinos experienced in 1992, when whole neighborhoods in
Los Angeles went up in flames and when the smoke of rage pervaded the air like
an avenging angel.
(The majestic decay of downtown Los Angeles in Elysium)
The exploitative nature of this future economy has
apparently continued unabated. We see corporations acting as independent
agents, vast agglomerations that wield power and that are answerable to almost
no one except for ambitious politicians and those micro-managers who are charged
with watching the bottom line. This is the case nowadays, and we understandably
share this fear of corporate entities that are run like private fiefdoms, and that
can so easily dominate the political class and wield public fear.
In the wake of the Citizens United decision of a few years
ago by the US Supreme Court, these corporations flood the political landscape
with what is termed “black” (secretive) money, funding the most conservative
and laissez-faire, anti-regulation, anti-transparency and pro-tax break
regulations possible. They also shamelessly blackmail cities and towns and
governments with astounding ease, as witnessed recently by the threat issued by
Boeing Corporation to move production of their new airliner to a more accommodating
state if their union refused to back a list of demands that entailed a
wholesale capitulation and curtailment of power and influence. Modern-day
corporations do this again and again, citing as they do the supposed “lack of
competitiveness” of certain locales and the threat of moving production to
different states (or overseas) if they aren’t granted tax concessions and
publicly-financed infrastructure benefits, as well as a more amenable workforce
(thus motivating the enactment of legislation that restricts the power of
unions to organize, all cynically termed “right to work” legislation). This
movie echoes the criticism that these corporations are the new mode of mercenary
agents that exploit institutional weaknesses and lurch from crisis to crisis,
only to be bailed out, over and over again, by the public.
Now, it isn’t to be expected that these members of the
mercenary and leisurely classes are forced to live in the same city or state or
even planet as the majority of the exploited underclass. Now they can escape to
that great big gleaming suburb in the sky, a space station known as Elysium. It
is indeed a field for heroes, and these heroes are indeed gods who have achieved
immortality, possessing astounding technology that allows them to live lives of
gracious and lavish comfort, able as they are to escape the ravages of disease
and age.
Thus, we have another parable of the two classes, those who
live in abject poverty and those who, of course, in this stereotypical view
that is conveyed by this film, come from various ethnic backgrounds (they are
primarily Latino and African, but with some Asian members). The overwhelmingly white
mercenary ruling class lives in the Beverly Hills of the sky, oblivious to what
happens down below, and I suppose this would have to represent the natural
progression of the idea of the suburb, the idea of retreat from the urban
center and from the working classes. Human society has diverged, and this
age-old exploitation continues apace, in a dark vision that underscores many of
the processes we fear are so much in play nowadays. (Need I mention once again
that this movie is a very obvious political fable?)
What I would have to quibble with is the way that the movie
relies on all-too-obvious stereotypes to make its points. The poor are,
overwhelmingly, of diverse ethnic backgrounds, and the slums and barrios that
are pictured, where wrecked cars abound amidst decaying buildings and gangs of
roving children, not to mention the Latino men wearing T-shirts and khaki pants
and tattoos, seems to indicate a certain vindication of the shrill warnings of
certain right-wing ideologues, ranging from Victor Davis Hanson to Samuel
Huntington, who proclaim that Latinos will never fully assimilate, and will
always exhibit social pathologies. It is very distressing that the movie
continues to play on these ethnic stereotypes even as it proceeds to elaborate
a fairy tale of the “great white savior” who will redeem humanity and save his
ethnic brethren down below.
As mentioned before, the film comes across as fairly one-dimensional.
There are no surprising plot twists, no unanticipated situations, no
exploration of moral ambiguity and no conflict that can’t be resolved by force.
The mercenary Kruger, who is the agent of the steely Secretary of Defense Delacourt
(played by the eternally frigid Jodie
Foster, who in my opinion has never conveyed warmth in any of her roles), is a
psychopath, and he embodies most clearly the morality of a world in which force
and opportunism compounded by a healthy degree of savagery go a long way in assuring
survival. These villains, as is the case with the corresponding victims
(witness the plight of the protagonist himself, who receives a deadly dose of
radiation in a callous workplace accident, or the little Latino girl who is
dying of leukemia) offer a tableau of sheep and wolves. There is no subtlety,
no vivid and compelling study of character. It is all about the political
allegory.
(Matt Damon in Elysium)
In the end, the protagonist, Max Da Costa, played by a
heavily muscled Matt Damon, will fulfill that one great task that was augured
for him by the nuns who raised him. He will also redeem himself from a life of
thievery, for Prometheus-like, he will steal the secret (in this case, the
computer code that will reboot the mainframe on Elysium) that will allow him
and his allies to offer “heaven” to all, an action that quite obviously has a
religious quality. (The hero who brings eternal life to the poor and suffering masses
who never lost their faith.)
There are, of course, numerous action sequences, but never a
snippet of clever dialogue. Everything is one dimensional, like the blazing
sunlight of Los Angeles, that pitiless sun that, in several visual sequences,
can’t help but evoke, if in a vaguely nostalgic way, the stunning visual
sequences in the opening of Bladerunner,
those visages of a vast and mysterious cityscape at night, impregnated with a
gothic feel of menace but also romance, painted in this case with blazing light
and billowing smoke clouds, not with rain, not with darkness, nor with blond
robots who scale the heights of the Tyrell Corporation building in search of a
second chance.
(Tyrell Corporation in the movie Bladerunner: a futuristic ziggurat)
The ending is all too convenient, and always, as with any
thriller, laced with suspense, far too many action sequences and a race against
the clock. What the movie fails to consider is the much more nuanced question
of whether man’s fundamental nature will change as a result of this sacrifice
by the protagonist. History isn’t the playground of individuals, it is the
expression of vast institutional forces at work, combined as it is with certain
irrational and instinctive drives that are evolutionary in nature, and the fact
is, we haven’t been able to resolve our fundamental conflictive nature.
Thus, this movie is inherently unsatisfying. It is
difficulty to feel emotionally attached to any of the characters, and in that
way, it is distancing. The movie could have benefited from more shadow, more
edginess, more nuance and night, and less of the blistering light of an overt political
allegory.
OGRomero © 2014
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