arrest this man, he talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge

[intertribal]

Well, I just wasted $1.50 of my money and 2 hours of my life watching this 2002 Matrix-wannabe movie "Equilibrium".  I now know that just because a movie has Christian Bale in it, does not ensure its quality.  It follows one of the sci-fi plots:

* in the post-apocalyptic future, the dictatorship-control-freak-government has decided that people would be better off without emotions or art.  So they declare all books and paintings contraband and all people who feel anything "sense-offenders", making everyone automatons, chained to the news announcements from their Paterfamilias and their curfews and authorizations.  The entire world is made of gray skyscrapers.  No one seems to eat.  Everyone wears black and walks around unsmiling.  Someone who was once on the side of the evil government decides to become a revolutionary after hearing classical music and brings down the government through, what else, violence. 

Once you've seen this once, you really have seen it a million times: "V for Vendetta", "1984", "The Matrix", "Minority Report", "Gattaca", Fahrenheit 451.  It's so easy to make stories like this.  The moral of the story is that art is wonderful, and control and the government are evil, and individuality is great, and it's fun to be a revolutionary, you get to kill lots of people.  So people make many stories like this.  I mean, at this point we'll be so concerned about this future that when the future turns out to be an invasion of human-eating bugs, everybody's going to be blindsided.

Here are some futuristic sci-fi movies whose futures do not revolve around the same tired bleak, sterile, "perfect but actually horrifically flawed" metropolis:

* "The Fifth Element" - the movie itself was trash, but at least there were colors, and there was dirt. 
* "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" - a great movie with mindblowing imagery, and here there are still masses of poor people who like to watch things get destroyed.
* "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence" - again, a metropolis that doesn't forget that corporations still have to earn money
* "Akira" - see above.  This movie's post-apocalyptic Neo Tokyo is very convincing - drugs, neon signs, political coups, tricked out bikes.
* "Tank Girl" - who the fuck understands or takes this movie seriously, but it takes place in a desert and involves tanks.

Because seriously.  A thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters, given a minute, will reproduce movies like "Equilibrium".  They may be loved by the young and impressionable who think they're being ground-breaking, but they say nothing new.  Dictatorships are bad.  Freedom is good.  Violence to revolt from one and earn the former.  And we wonder why, in spite of us always rooting for freedom fighters in movies like this, we continue to vote in politicians like Bush?  The military-industrial complex that is Hollywood laughs as it churns out these projects.

Comments

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

The almost-sex scene... o God, that was painful. That's one of those things I would sort of call "forced seduction" that I ranted about in my rape writing post.

No, no, it was the Palace of Justice and the Hall of Destruction. I remember because Palace of Justice was the phrase in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I dunno, that's why I love anthro (and its theory--yeah, yeah...). I feel like it explains things like "why we continue to vote in politicians like Bush" and what violence does and what things people believe that keep them subjugated...and maybe it's a naive hope, because I often think that nothing can change, but maybe then I can understand how it would be possible (change), and how to make it come about. I'm suspicious of politics, because I think that the systems, the institutions, the ideologies they perpetuate themselves have to change before the people in power would do anything different... and that's a lot to ask from a government. It's even too much to ask of a revolution, probably. And so then I give up and think that nothing will ever change. But maybe I only think that because I haven't lived long enough to see any real changes occur, I don't know. Or to see things get better instead of worse. Bleeh. So basically, I hope that understanding these things and doing what I love could someday help more than just me, that I can do more than be just another professor inspiring students who'll grow up to do the same thing--not that I don't value teaching, because I am learning that it is valuable, I just don't want that to be all I can do. But it's like this insane, naive little hope that I have, and maybe it'll never amount to anything. Probably not. But hey, it makes me feel like less of a nihilist, because nihilism sucks. I'll probably just succumb to the norms of the institution and do my ethnographic fieldwork and fall in love and get married and come back and teach. God, I hope not. Siiigh.

But I really love V for Vendetta in a way I don't love the others...maybe it's the sense of knowing that the news and the government are lying and not caring, because your life is just fine anyway, you've got your wife and kids and blah blah blah. It's the apathy, and the idea that someone could shake that from the middle class....ah, well. A fire just waiting for fuel (ani difranco song).

But yeah, equilibrium sucks.

So, uhh...yeah, I'm never going to change shit, but I'll die ranting about it, I guess. And by the end, I'll be "qualified" to do that, legitimate because I have my authority-granting doctorate....but probably only within the academic elite. Steve seems bent on making the academic elite not an elite anymore, but I'm not sure how he's going to manage that. Indoctrinate us all to do his bidding? Hahaha...

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Hmm... well, I definitely think that governments can change, and so can institutions and ideologies. Every paper that I write seems to be about the changes that various actors force through countries in an attempt to make them more to their liking. Indonesia has changed phenomenally since its 1945 independence - thanks to the military, Soeharto's government, the religious right, and the intellectual left. It might be not a grand change that is readily seen or documented, but you can tell by what the country puts out, what kind of scholars the country produces. Norms change. I really believe that norms change, and I think that's the most important factor in political change. A lot of people think the UN can't do anything and hasn't done anything, but I argue that it has changed things, because it's changed norms, and a change of norms will eventually somehow become a change in situation. And I guess that's also what's different between us - about "I only think that because I haven't lived long enough to see any real changes occur". Real changes occur all the time, just in different places, obscure little places, and it's very easy to be cynical about them. Indonesia's first free and fair elections were actually riddled with problems and funding issues and shit, and international NGOs were overshadowing local NGOs, but at least there were local NGOs, at least there were and are people in the country who believe free and fair elections are a good thing, and at least now they're somewhat empowered to do something to ensure free and fair elections happen. That's a change. The fact that we now have a president who cracks down on corruption so hard that some districts are running out of government officials, and who believes in democracy, is a change. It might not result in much because he's had to spend more time visiting natural disaster crises. But it's still a change.

Almost everything will help someone, somehow. I mean, serial killers will help people in the sense that they may open people's eyes to what humanity is capable of, and knowledge is a good thing, and maybe those people will learn to treasure life or be good to others or whatever. It's all in how direct your change is.

You should talk to Yue, she loves V for Vendetta too. I thought it gave itself too much credit... the issues it broached were the issues that like, The Nation, have been screaming about for twenty years. I also hated V. And... God, I don't know. I have a lot of problems with that movie...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I guess my suspicion is that when things seem to change, they don't actually. Like it looks different, but it's just a different picture for the same problem. "May their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon / And we've moved on to the electric chair." But I do believe that change can happen...just that it's easy to see change where there isn't any--or even where it looks like a good change but is actually hurting people. It's like arguing with Jason, when we can tell he's a history major and I'm anthro, just because he believes that, despite flaws, things have gotten radically better in the U.S. since the 1950's (for women & minorities), and Tara and I were like, yeah...the forms have changed, but the structure's stayed the same. Which is probably, I hope, an exaggeration. And people will make the same argument about Indonesia and ever other place or nation, explain how some fundamental belief or pattern or something will make people continue to fuck things up the same way even when they change on the surface. So I don't know, thanks for being someone who believes that change can happen, because I'm around so few of those lately, it seems. And I do believe it can, goddamn it, even if I doubt it, even if the stupid berger & luckmann book makes it sound impossible, I just also am suspicious of anything that claims to be change, but I think that's good--I think you need to keep it in check (uh, not "you" or me personally either. it's not exactly an individual job).

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I dunno, sometimes also, some "forms" are better than others. You could win that point against me pretty easily, probably. But I don't like "lesser of two evils," which I feel is what that often amounts to.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

And I agree that insofar as something like the UN can change norms, that is probably the most important factor in political change; I just also think that change seems apparent more often than it is. Much as people on the west coast think their gender relations are better than in the midwest, but I see those wonderful, liberal, feminist men doing the same damn things that the godfearing, conservative, frat boys do, with different reasoning, and it's sad. And it does have the potential for change...maybe even some real change has occurred, but...much less than they think, and sometimes it's the thinking that this wonderful change has happened that bothers me, because then people refuse to see what's wrong...

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Sorry all my thinking is all sorts of socio-cultural. It happens. Our language & politics unit is race and gender right now ("language: weapon of the strong" which came after "language: weapon of the weak?"), and we're reading about pornography when I get back, so that's probably where my focus is....

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

It's all good. I actually oddly think that the US has changed less than other countries... like Indonesia, the only country I know... have, and I think that may be because Indonesia's such a young country in comparison - we really did only start being a unified nation in 1945. So maybe some things in the US have settled and it's much harder to change them now. I do think that things are better for women now in the U.S., but not for minorities, not unless they're rich. But I'm not a women's studies person, so...

it's true what you're saying about the overall structure being the same despite a "change". But the argument in norm theory, in poli sci, is that even if people feel the need to lie to cover up the same shit that before they were doing out in the open, that's still a change. Like, yes, you have a constitution, but you don't really follow it - but at least you show that having a constitution is the norm/ideal/standard, and the hope is that from there people will try to hold you accountable to the promises you made, even if they were just cover-ups you never intended to follow through on. The hope is also that the people of the country will start to believe the norm and it will become engrained in society, and then you won't have the whole doublespeak thing going on.

However, an important corollary: some norms are deeper than others, and thus some changes are harder than others. Particularly if they involve things like breaking cultural and/or religious tradition in order to adhere to universal liberal principles. And I think some norms might just not change. Like this woman Charli Carpenter wrote about the norm of saving "women and children first" and thus leaving the men to die, in the Balkans, even though men are more likely to be killed than women (but women are of course more likely to be raped). And I wrote in my memo that she writes about this norm as if it is very deeply engrained at all levels of the hierarchy, and I think it's very old too, and so you have to wonder if it's something that came inherent with a patriarchal civilization and that probably won't change unless the entire civilization gets blown to bits and you start from scratch. OR if it's something biological, though I tend to blame civilization before biology.