Elysium’s Director Thinks His Hellish Paradise Is Our Future
wired.com
wired.com
(WARNING: Spoilers below)
"Tessier-Ashpool is a fictional family appearing in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy novels. The family owns Freeside, a space station shaped like a spindle Bernal sphere constructed in high orbit. The family resides in the Villa Straylight, which occupies one end of the spindle.
The family is organized and run as a corporation, Tessier-Ashpool S.A.. Family members are kept under cryogenic stasis and thawed out periodically so that governance of the family is cycled between members. According to "orbital law" they are legally dead while cryogenically preserved.
...
The Tessier-Ashpools were founded with the marriage of scions of two powerful families: Marie-France Tessier, who was Swiss and John Harness Ashpool, an Australian who inherited a Melbourne engineering company. After the two were married, Ashpool began construction of Freeside in high orbit due to the relatively relaxed laws governing construction.
The family became extremely successful financially, developing the attached space station, sponsoring human colonization of space, and acquiring a number of other firms which subsequently flourished.
...
However, following the death of Marie-France, the family became extremely reclusive. Family members, including Ashpool, tended to place themselves in cryogenic sleep. At any one given time, only one or two of the children would be awake. They are also known for cloning their own assassins, "vat-grown" ninja who follow their orders without question.
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By the time of Neuromancer the family has become extremely degenerate and dysfunctional. The patriarch Ashpool spends almost all of his time in cryogenic stasis. A dissolute alcoholic and heavy drug user, when he is awakened for the final time he has sex with and subsequently murders a clone of his daughter prior to committing suicide."
2312 is a future where many generations of people have lived on colonies on Mercury, Venus, Mars, hollowed-out asteroids ("terraria"), the outer moons. The spacers live in a new paradigm, not a rich paradise like Elysium, but a very pleasant, long and happy life, while those who inhabit the Earth live in a warring, diseased, overpopulated and climate-change-disaster struck Earth.
I think the crowd here would like this book. You should read it.
b) having grown up in South Africa, Blomkamp may have some unique insights about human nature.
it's certainly interesting to contemplate what's going to happen.
You can find there rich and poor, genetic modifications only rich can afford, one (lack of the need to sleep) so special that it reshapes world. You can find there universal income as payment for voting. You can find philosophy of exchange through voluntary mutually beneficial contracts promoted by such influential inventor that it raises to the same eminence buddism has. Awesome read.
I really hope the actual movie is more nuanced in the politics it looks like it's trying to shove down our throats.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, just sit back and enjoy the ride.
> The director finds it unfortunate that observers are already drawing parallels between Elysium and the Occupy movement, a phenomenon that he says wasn’t even a consideration. Blomkamp identifies as neither liberal nor conservative, which doesn’t stop people from ascribing all sorts of agendas to him and his films.
and
> But Blomkamp insists Elysium isn’t some sort of filmic Paul Krugman op-ed piece. It’s important for him that his movies grapple with things that matter, in this case economic disparity, immigration, health care, corporate greed. But he disdains prescription-happy “message” movies—that’s what documentaries are for, he says—and intends Elysium to be first and foremost a mass-appeal, summer popcorn flick. Allegory, satire, and dark humor interest him; providing pat answers to society’s woes does not. “Anybody who thinks they can change the world by making films,” he says, “is sorely mistaken.”
No, it makes it quite clear that I didn't just nod my head and agree with whatever came out of his mouth.
But Blomkamp insists Elysium isn’t some sort of filmic Paul Krugman op-ed piece. It’s important for him that his movies grapple with things that matter, in this case economic disparity, immigration, health care, corporate greed. But he disdains prescription-happy “message” movies—that’s what documentaries are for, he says—and intends Elysium to be first and foremost a mass-appeal, summer popcorn flick. Allegory, satire, and dark humor interest him; providing pat answers to society’s woes does not. “Anybody who thinks they can change the world by making films,” he says, “is sorely mistaken.
Yeah, and I say I'm the King of England.
There's a reason why he was asked the question. It's because at very least the trailer makes it look like he's doing some pretty heavy axe grinding.
As with politics, I tend to take actions more into consideration than words. The right words are too easy to fabricate. The right actions, not so much.
So while Blomkamp may share some politics with OWS, it's silly to suggest he borrowed them from OWS or the recent politics of the last couple of years.
Side note: the fact that his sci-fi allegories of apartheid-era South Africa has enough in parallel with present-day America to inspire suspicion, is troubling.
What does it matter where the tropes originally came from? They are what they are and they're easy to identify regardless of whether from OWS or his own personal experiences.
Jeez, just commenting on the actual movie trailer itself and the politics that it seems to be pushing pretty hard. Seems like I pushed some buttons to get the straw men and heavy negative moderation hammers thrown at me.
I wasn't aware that I had to mention the entire history of class conflict in order to note a strong similarity with a recent movement.
fantasies perpetuated on our generation is the idea that there are simple policy prescriptions that are "good for everyone.
Ironic that you say that since in political threads you generally defend a one-size-fits-all, overpowering American government. If you really believed what you said then I'd think you'd be all for Freedom and individual Liberty. Instead, I view you as an opponent of those things in favor of the State.
There is nothing inconsistent with that view and the recognition that a minority of people who hold a majority of the wealth have incentives that do not necessarily align with the interests of the majority. Indeed, it is entirely consistent with that view, based on the basic belief that the purpose of government is to maximize the prosperity of the majority, with the protection of the rights of individuals being an important but secondary concern.