One movie I am very much looking forward to seeing is "Elysium" by Neill Blomkamp, aka the director of District 9. For those unaware, the film's premise is about a dystopian society where the uber-rich live on a luxurious space station, the titular Elysium, while everyone else lives on a Earth that has more or less gone to hell with crime, pollution, the works. And its up to Matt Damon to save us all. (Also, it has him and Sharlto Copley having a katana fight, which is awesome).
Reason why I bring this up is, considering the film's subject matter, its become a magnet for political debate. Really, really, stupid political debate. Essentially, those on the right claim the film to be "socialist propaganda" since Matt Damon's character seems to be the classic "Working-class hero who overthrows the bourgeoisie" archetype. Those on the left claim the dystopic world that the film presents is what will happen if conservatives have their way and its why we must they must never be elected into power lest this comes to be.
The issue of the wealth gap, the "1 vs the 99%" is a very real concern. But it seems to me both sides have turned this into a "Left vs. Right" issue where they blame each other for causing it and that they and only they can rectify the flaws. Aside from the fact that I doubt Blomkamp's intention was to turn the film into a politically ideological debate defined by parties, both tend to ignore that they themselves are guilty.
A thing I've noticed that may have served as an inspiration for Elysium's motif is the gated communities in Los Angeles in contrast to inner-city slum neighborhoods. The gated communities have private security patrols, much like the robots shown in the trailers, and they more or less are divorced from the problems with places like South LA, where crime, police brutality and other things are rampant. And many of the progressive policies that have led California to bankruptcy is designed to maintain that status quo, the same way the creators of Elysium are determined to keep immigrants from Earth off their station.
So the bottom line is that, left vs. right, both sides are guilty of maintaining the social standards that could very well lead to the nightmarish world that Elysium demonstrates. Both sides, and especially the left, fail to notice the hypocrisy as they are too busy blaming each other for the damage.
And like the definition of insanity, we continue to perpetuate this hoping things will change.
Wait, i'm confused.... if the evil left had their way, wouldn't that mean that everyone would have access to healthcare, the minimum wage would be $12.00/hour, and rich people would be taxed more heavily?
ReplyDeleteHow do things like that lead to the same outcome as the right's laissez-faire fixation?
If by health care you mean an extremely broken and flawed system bound to create more problems then it stops, employers being forced to raise prices on commodities to balance the wage increase (Not to mention, minimum wage laws were designed to have minorities be prevented from competing with white jobs), and increasing taxes just so the government can squander it all with pork barrel legislation and continue bailing out the banks and corpies that got us into this mess, I would say yes.
ReplyDeleteThough if you want proof as to why blind adherence to the left's policies will be just as disastrous as blind adherence to the right, just look at Detroit.
ReplyDeleteThis... is why we need a single-payer health care system. We're Americans, goddamnit all to hell, and if we put our minds to it, we could create the most efficient, most unified, most logical health care system in the world.
ReplyDeleteBut we can't, as long as half our politicians are looking out for the profit margins of corporations instead, and screaming that America is incapable of anything.