Science fiction has long been used as a cloak to wrap social commentary so the producers of content can claim that the comments are just...well, part of science fiction. Classic science fiction shows and movies are a snapshot of the times in which they were created.
I was home recently, in part, for my son's birthday. When I'm home I try to set aside time to focus on doing things with my boy, since I'm away in the city so often. I got up one morning and asked him if he'd like to play a video game, and instead he suggested watching a movie. He proudly proclaimed that he found a movie that "you might like, Daddy!," so of course I agreed to see what he unearthed in the Netflix queue.
The movie? Godzilla. Not one of the campy Japanese Godzilla, but the 1998 American Matthew Broderick film. One of the few movies I've seen where Matthew Broderick's performance managed to make me cringe when he delivered lines.
My son is young, so action and effects can carry a bad film well in his opinion. I tried to use it as a teachable moment and brought up the idea that Godzilla was originally a way to express concern about nuclear weapons and experimentation.
"We used nuclear bombs on Japan during World War II," I said. "The radiation causes mutation to people's cells. Cancer. Godzilla was a monster created by nuclear radiation, because that's what people were worried about."
I went on to tell him that if he looked at Spider-Man, originally he was bitten by a radioactive spider. Today's reboots of Spider-Man's origin have him bitten by a genetically altered spider, reflecting our society's concern with experimenting on genes.
This got me thinking about some trends in what comprises popular themes in horror and sci-fi in the past few years. I know it's not a comprehensive study, and it's purely anecdotal, but this still gives me something to pause and think about.
Example; zombies. My wife and I were discussing Walking Dead and she said that if there were some kind of zombie apocalypse, she'd want to die right away.
"You'd only have to survive a certain period in the beginning...zombies would rot, and in winter they'd freeze, depending on where you were," I said.
"Have you seen what happens to people who survive?," she said. "They aren't running away from zombies."
She had a point. Worse, I read the comic series, so I know what happened there. Walking Dead isn't about zombies. It's about people. And people become very, very horrible in the Walking Dead universe. The acts committed in that series are not so much about survival, but in many cases are an expression of what people will do when they have the opportunity to do the things civilization reins in.
People can justify just about any behaviors, despite being harmful to others.
I watched a movie this weekend called Hell. It was a German film about a near-future where solar flares damaged our atmosphere, raising temperatures and exposing the planet to more damaging sunlight. Water becomes scarce and people begin fighting for resources. The movie focuses on the efforts of 4 survivors to head to the mountains where water and vegetation are rumored to exist.
Along the way they encounter a group of people who were farmers; I suppose in a way they still are, even after the livestock have died, if you catch my drift. I found the scene where they are seating Marie, whom they plan to marry off to their son, at the dinner table for their...meat stew....cringe-worthy, as they say a prayer thanking God for their bounty, much as some families today. In a future where food becomes scarce I'm not sure this scene is outside the realm of possibility; desperate people have done things like this in the past. This was at a point where there was no regret or hesitation in what they did; it was all justified and had become normal to them, making it all the more horrifying.
People can justify just about any behaviors, despite being harmful to others.
Star Trek was originally a vision of an optimistic future, where humanity was at peace and people pursued interests to better themselves. Money was no longer a driving force in our lives, as replicators apparently did away with the need for acquiring material wealth. Medicines prolonged lives. Races lived in harmony. The original series had many blatant commentaries on society, from races that were painted black on one sie and white on the other to Kirk kissing Uhura on screen, something sure to upset the more "traditional" minds of the period with strong opinions on mixed-race relationships.
But even in this series set in a backdrop of peace, there were elements of hidden agendas. Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country, focused on the hidden agendas of certain elements in Starfleet, the Romulan and Klingon Empires and the Federation to perpetuate war. It was meant to be a reflection of fear of change, set against a commentary of the cold war between the Russians and the US ending. High-ranking officials in positions of power were maneuvering to continue the war between the two groups rather than move towards peace.
That movie was released in 1991. Today, the US is still at war (though not with our Cold War counterparts) and Congress is lobbied by companies with military interests to continue spending more money on our armed forces than the next 10 major military powers combined.
People can justify just about any behaviors, despite being harmful to others.
I recognize this is anecdotal. People have a wonderfully developed sense of confirmation bias, and we see patterns in otherwise chaotic systems. Something in these non-patterned anecdotes makes me wonder if we, as a society, don't see a person's potential to always be looking for ways to take advantage of others and justify it through whatever cognitive dissonance necessary to gain the moral high ground. Many of our stories have the "bad guy" able to ruthlessly exploit and manipulate others for their own ends, sometimes with horrifyingly sensible reasoning.
I see it in advertising; we are barraged by messages for beauty products, clothes, weight loss pills and vitamins, herbal remedies, snack foods, fast food promotions and home business ideas. Children are hit with twice as many ads for toys and cartoons (although you might be able to argue that the cartoons are just extended-length advertisements for toys.) Our society is largely consumer based; we judge each other by what toys we possess and what brands we wear.
But what happens when you actually buy these things that you're told to buy?
If you aren't of a wealthier class in society, there is an instant backlash of judgement that you are living beyond your means. It's your fault you're poor.
What stimulates the economy?
The government, along with the businesses that blame you for your economic status, wants you to go out and spend. That message was louder than ever in the post-9/11 economy, ironically around the time people were told they were getting into crap mortgages (that banks knew full well these same people were huge risks to give loans to, but profited from them in the short term) because they should have known better than to get a mortgage they couldn't afford in the first place.
(Keeping in mind that the businesses that controlled the purse strings...taking the risk to make a profit...later blamed them for taking the money they were willing to loan.)
These are groups that work on making a profit to the detriment of society in the long run.
People can justify just about any behaviors, despite being harmful to others.
I previously posted that there's a long tail of poverty, and the wealth gap is growing. The middle class is slowly disappearing into the tail under the poverty line, while the top 1% continues to gain more money than they could possibly spend in their lifetimes. There won't be enough people to keep spending enough money to keep the economy sustainable.
I also noticed a new trend emerging as policy makers talk of "job makers;" usually these job makers speak up in fighting labor reforms or proposals to increase minimum wage. I also heard the term thrown around quite a bit with healthcare reform, in that new "Obamacare" regulations were too expensive for businesses to afford for their employees.
It struck me as I read articles about minimum wage workers...people working in fast food, or Wal-Mart, or other service industries that serve to skew jobless figures...that these people are often living under the poverty line. The usual image portrayed of the poor are people that sit around reaping free money from the government while watching TV and taking free rides in ambulances because...really, who wouldn't want to spend hours in the hospital in their copious free time?
What happens to the working poor when they have health issues? Taxpayers have to make up the difference.
What happens when the working poor can't afford to feed their kids? Taxpayers make up the difference.
There's a stunning number of working poor, and I fear that number will continue to climb as the economy pushes the middle class farther down in the wealth gap. But it becomes a bit darker when you see that the classic "job creator" lobbying Congress relies on our socialist assistance nets to subsidize their workforce while maximizing profits. They actively lobby to keep regulations and reforms from giving their workers a better standard of living that could help get them off taxpayer funded assistance.
For a certain class of people, Gordon Gekko said it best..."Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works." The problem is that this only seems to work for a narrow class of people.
People can justify just about any behaviors, despite being harmful to others.
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