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.