Blade Runner

Blade Runner is a really silly movie now that I look back at it. I mean, I really do like it. I really like Phillip Dick novels. He writes well. But there are just so many silly things that now detract from the film (though at the time they may have enhanced it), like hover cars. Hover cars are the one thing I cannot forgive a film set in the not so distant future for having. What are they expecting, the world to create some powerful anti-gravity machine that cars can use? Or to have much less learn how to use properly enough fuel to keep a car in flight for long periods of time? Honestly. The glow stick umbrellas make more sense.

But what I find most interesting is how Ridley Scott leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not Harrison Ford is a Replicant. I don’t know if it actually would have any impact on the movie if he was or wasn’t. Rather, I think the doubt that exists when you carefully watch the movie is the most useful thing. It makes clear a point about AI, that once perfected those machines really will be able to walk among us unnoticed.

At the same time, what didn’t jive so well with me was the notion of “retiring.” I really like the inclusion of it as a concept, though. To me, it feels like a commentary on our semantic differences and how they make certain things more acceptable. For example, you don’t take an animal to the vet to be killed, rather put down. You don’t eat cow, you eat beef. It continues on. This to me was quite interesting, because it posits the same possibility within cyborgs and emerging technology. To be seen as apart not for any logical reason but simply because of the label.

Tron

I’ve always loved Tron. And because of that, I was really excited to see it on the syllabus for this class. That being said, Tron is an interesting departure from the other movies we’ve seen so far. In every other movie, the religious aspect fit the dystopic nature of the film. Indeed, religion was often a part of the “evil” technocratic society.

But not in Tron. In Tron, the “religion” of the computer world revolves around the users. To the programs, the users are a metaphysical group that guide their every action, telling them what to do, what’s good, and what’s evil. This marks an obvious departure, since the programs that do not leave their users are the protagonists, and the ones that leave their users, cease being religious, are the evil.

So I suppose Tron makes clear its view that atheism leads to the decline of society. The only way this could be seen to fit with the rest is with the thesis that only real, meaningful religion that is personal (as nothing can be more personal than each person having a different god, like in Tron) and not co-opted by the state is beneficial.

THX 1138

Religion is spectacular today, and THX 1138 reflects that beautifully. Now, when I say “spectacular” I don’t mean what you find when you look in your OED, American Heritage, or Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. I’m talking in the Situationalist Guy DeBord sense. Where something spectacular is, put briefly, something that perpetuates the economic climate; particularly that of the dehumanizing capitalist system. That is unquestionably done in THX 1138. The faux-confessional, where comfort is pre-loaded, ends with a command to buy.

Buying, endorsed by religion? Clearly, religion has become subject to the all-encompassing machine of economics. Instead of saying ‘be good” it says buy. Maybe it means being good is being, but either way, religion is clearly trying to make people stimulate the economy.

The analog to current day religion is obvious. Religious institutions force people to pay to see relics (like the two thorns supposedly from the thorn of crowns), buy religious texts, and is used by the right side of the political spectrum to stay in power, simultaneously perpetuating free-market capitalism.

And yes, it probably is this obvious. I mean, George Lucas named Darth Vader such, and had him be Luke’s father. Vader is Danish for father. Go figure.

And I think this creates an interesting point when combined with escape velocity. I think the article is wrong. It’s not escaping anything. It’s rather helping capitalism escape all criticism. People need to use technology to stay organized, need to pay for it. So any resistance movement would need to help capitalism in some way to try and organize against it, still perpetuating it. So no, technology is not escaping on its own, rather only helping something else escape.