What is it about dystopia that fascinates us? Why do we like stories portraying the end of civilization as we know and even the end of the world. Even The Bible ends with the world coming to an end? It’s like we’re too busy worried about showing how much of an awful future we’ll have rather than working on making a brighter future.
The latest media to make people shit egg rolls is Civil War. I haven’t seen it yet. But the way people are talking about it, dystopia is a new concept to the public. I remember watch Red Dawn many times on HBO during the 1980s. It was set in an alternative world where the Soviet Union organizes with Nicaragua and Cuba to overtake an unspecified part of America. It seemed terrifying. But in reality, the Soviet Union was coasting on fumes by the mid-1980s. Mikhail Gorbachev even commented when visiting America years later how he like the supermarket he went to added more items on the shelves to impress him only to realize that’s how most stores look.
At the same time, you had TV movies like The Day After where two nuclear bombs hit the Lawrence, Kan. area and Threads where a nuclear war hits England. Then there was Amerika, where the Soviet Union has overtaken America. The bloated miniseries released during February 1987 ran for about 870 minutes and is set in 1997, about six years after the Soviet Union actually collapsed. The year 1997 was also when Skynet was supposed to lead to a nuclear war that would lead to the rise of the machines. Don’t remember it? Well, they retconned it and said it would actually happen in 2005-ish in the third Terminator movie, I think.
Anyone remember when the “damned dirty apes” took over the world in 1991? It was told in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. And we have another Apes movie coming this year. It’s called Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. When will we ever learn? Well, we’re still recovering from the Blip (five years after the Snap) that happened in 2023 that suddenly made everything all better following the Snap. Yes, everything was so great after the Blip that Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson were able to take a European trip. (I’ve done a previous column about all the untold problems with the Snap/Blip and how the MCU started to go off the rails.)
Ok, I’m nitpicking. Filmmakers and writers can’t predict the future. I don’t even think George Orwell should get as much credit as he does for 1984. Yes, I said it. It needed to be said. I think too many people have misread what Orwell was trying to say with the book. He wasn’t really talking about America. Not everything is about America, you know. I think Orwell was more concerned about how Europe in the years after World War II were leading down the same path committing the same errors after World War I. The book was published in June 1949 and Orwell died in January of 1950.
Orwell didn’t really foresee the next 75 years. He was just telling us we’re going to keep committing the same mistakes unless we make changes. The man would’ve really lost his shit if he lived long enough to see what happened in Iran in 1953. You know when American and western civilizations said Iran couldn’t have a democratically elected leader because they had massive oil reserves. We helped overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and then install the shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi which created many problems including violence for the Iranian people. We basically put Big Brother in Iran for no other reason that automobiles were needed to run at an affordable price.
And I’m just going to address the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about when it comes to these types of movies, TV series or books. It’s all about scaring white people into a way of life they’ve being treated other people of color over the centuries. I mean, one of the biggest jokes people had about The Walking Dead was how there weren’t many black people. The series started out in Georgia. Yes, like there’s not that many black people in Georgia. A third of the fucking state is black people. Yet, you could count the black cast members on your fingers. Maybe Key and Peele was on to something with their comedy skit where all the white zombies are scared of the black people.
(There’s a fan theory about this that TWD exists in a world where the African Slave Trade didn’t exist since no one says the “zombie” word. And the word “zombie” comes out of Haitian folklore. And the country has many major crucial events in the slave trade and revolts that I can’t get into with this post.)
This brings me to another point with these freaking zombie shows and movies. If things were really as bad as portrayed, getting your brains eaten out would be a relief. Do you know how many active nuclear reactors are still in America? What do you think will happen if no one is there? Imagine what would happen to the lock and dam systems if they couldn’t be manned at all times. Then, you have the weather patterns. There’s spring and summer flooding or tornadic activities. That’s if a zombie apocalypse happens around this time of year.
What if it happens right before winter and there’s a polar vortex cold snap? We lose power. People freeze and don’t have access to certain things. Hell, look what happened down in Texas back in February of 2021. That was for one week. And then when the AT&T phones went down for a few hours, people couldn’t even make due then. All these doomsday preppers think they can live for years on K-rations and using flint for fire? (This is a particular gripe of mine but zombies would succumb to the elements so quickly. They’re rotting flesh. All the scavenger insects and animals would be all over them. Anyone who’s ever lived on a farm/ranch can attest that dead animals bring out the scavengers.)
But yes, throughout history we have done things to people that seem like they’re out of a dystopia. Ask all the Japanese people who were sent to camps following Pearl Harbor what they think about Civil War. There are many black people still alive with memories of how horrible things were just 40-50 years ago in certain towns and cities. Indigenous Native Americans are still treated badly in some areas. Being that it’s an election year, we’re hearing about immigration again this year. And many people think they have a right to question Latinos who were born and raised in America. Racists are still telling black people to “Go back to Africa!”
Dystopia entertainment works on the notion, or it has in the last few decades, on the myth that Americans will let their neighbors, friends, co-workers, and even family die so they’d survive. Unfortunately, it mostly doesn’t happen in the real world. A lot of people are inherently decent and nice to each other despite what the media, politicians and Hollywood would have you believe. Following the 9/11 attacks, people in New York City (which has been called “Hell on Earth” by many people who’ve never been within 100 miles of the Big Apple) showed people do care. Strangers carried others to safety. People built make-shift stretchers for no pay or compensation. And those who could donated blood in record levels. Whenever there is a natural disaster, people are looking to help.
That’s why I laugh at a lot of these movies and TV shows. The main reason I stopped watching The Walking Dead is that all the characters became so unlikeable because of their greed and selfishness. And Fear the Walking Dead pretty much kicked it off in the early episodes showing people willing to let their neighbors die so they could be safe. This isn’t entertainment. It’s lazy writing. Yes, there are people out there like this but for the most part, people will come to one’s aide and assistance when needed. And TWD seemed to kill off people left and right it made Game of Thrones look like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Movie franchises like The Hunger Games, The Purge, Divergent and so forth as well as The Handmaid’s Tale series and The Last of Us all live under the assumption people would be so easy to turn against each other. But what we’re watching started out many years earlier. When in reality, this isn’t the case. The Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865. Nazi Germany may have started out in 1933 but it didn’t really kick in to full mode until it invaded Poland at the beginning of September 1939. And by September of 1945, the war in Europe had been over for months. There’s always going to be resistance from within with loyalists replace others in positions.
You need only to watch Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain, Free State of Jones, Valkyrie or even Schindler’s List to see that there wasn’t an even line between the Union and Confederacy or even the Germans themselves. Dictatorships essentially do not last. Some last longer than others, but people grow tired and begin to rebel. Or the economy collapses so much the common people have nothing to lose. And politicians and military leaders ought to know that when people have nothing to lose, it’s the worst time for them.
In all realities, your basic small-town America only has a police department and/or sheriff’s office that only has a handful of law officers on staff at any given time. Contrast that with the number of people in many states who own firearms and weaponry, law enforcement can easily be overthrown if even a small fraction of the overall population of a town or county band together to do so. We don’t. You know why? For the most part, we all get along well despite what people want you to think.
I’ll be blunt. Crime is down, no matter what conservatives and the right-wing media want you to believe. We aren’t divided as much as people say. We may be divided on things like gay marriage, abortion issues and immigration, but damn it, we’ve always been divided on those issues. And I don’t look for us to change in my lifetime even if I live to be 109. I think gradually we’ve become more and more accepting of others as time goes on. We’re always going to be debating where and what to spend taxpayer money on.
Politicians and the media think all of it should be changed overnight either way. It’s not going to happen. You’re not going to make anyone change their views just because. Most people I know who have been prejudiced and biased toward interracial marriage or same-sex marriage usually change their minds the old fashioned way – they get to know people better. Rather than listening to some preacher in Tennessee or some conservative Congressman in Iowa thumb a Bible saying that everyone should be this way, they get to like people more by talking to them, spending time with them so they can come to the conclusions themselves.
A lot of this is nothing more than political issues so people can get campaign money and votes. And despite being a liberal bisexual open-minded person, Sen. Krysten Sinema (D-Arizona) proved that money talks and bullshit walks. Electing a new county sheriff or prosecutor shouldn’t be a party issue but many states have it where they have to be a Democrat or Republican. Mainly it’s to scare people into believing if they don’t get out and vote, the sheriff is going to implement a stop-and-frisk policy or the D.A. is going to let child molesters walk free.
Yes, it’s fear that drives many people to the voting booths. It’s because from the moment we’re old enough to comprehend things, we’re told to be afraid of everything, including our own shadows. Like the line from Se7en, it’s easy to beat a child than it is to raise a child. And anyone will tell you, the more strict a parent is the more the child will learn how they can get away with things. Kids seem always to be “disrespectful” to adults. It’s in all the movies and TV shows I’ve heard over the years, so it appears not to have changed. Maybe it’s because we see the world differently as we get older and tell ourselves the hell-raising we did wasn’t as bad when it was in fact worse.
People seemed to live more and more in Nostalgialand and that’s the problem. We have more people living today who have outlived their ancestors. This means many of them came to their formative years during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, the political turmoil times of the 1970s or even the Reaganeighties where we were force-fed a lie of a “City on a Hill” that didn’t really exist. If anything changed, people moved to the suburbs and went into self-isolation. Most people will tell you living in more metropolitan areas they get along better because they realize they have to co-exist.
I get along well with my neighbors but we hardly see each other. I’m sure they have more conservative and religious beliefs than I do. And that’s ok. I’m not trying to change them and they are not trying to change me. Most people just want to live their lives. They want to do their own things and not be bothered by others. But the problem is that they are being told they’re constantly battling each other in intelligence or common decency.
The foolish thing is this is the only way a lot of people in the media can focus on. I remember seeing a news story a few weeks back at how younger people in this part of Oklahoma favor Trump. But did the reporter do any accurate assessment? And if they did, how did they come about the results? Polls are showing people favor Trump more. But I’ve never been asked to do an legitimate poll. And I’ve never heard of from anyone I know on being questioned in a poll. The only stuff I’ve seen is just that crap you see online that will send you to some sponsored content. Are pollsters still cold-calling? If so, it might explain a lot because I don’t know anyone under the age of 60 who still answers a phone call from a number they don’t recognize on Caller ID. And a lot of people don’t like talking on the phone anyway.
(Even as I write this a call came over my cell phone of a “Spam Risk.” I’m not answering it. They can leave a voice message that I’ll probably delete after listening to it for four seconds.)
While a lot of these forms of entertainment are just that – entertainment, realistically they wouldn’t happen. I can’t imagine America falling into a theocracy like Gilead especially now in 2024. There’s too many women in crucial employment jobs and positions. That’s the same for The Purge movies. The aftermaths would be more damaging than we’d think.
That’s why I think most of the people who actually voted for Donald J. Trump in 2020 think Joe Biden did win. While there were some foolish people who showed up at the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection coup attempt, they were against the violence. They just went into the Capitol Building because others did. These are the ones who are crying and pleading about being convicted and having to serve time. They’re lucky they’re not facing murder charges for the people that died. Yet, one has to stop listening to what others are saying and watch with their own eyes and see it’s not in sync.
Most conservatives I know were either outraged by Jan. 6 or have kept their mouths quiet or opinions to themselves because there’s no way to justify it. They were also outraged over the fatal shootings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor because you have to realize that you can’t just shoot people because they have a different skin color. And the people shooting these people are just racist and hate others. William Brock, 81, of South Charleston, Ohio, is charged with fatally shooting Loletha Hill, 61, an Uber driver who was scammed into going to Brock’s residence to pick up a package that didn’t exist. Brock says he had been scammed and felt threatened. But dash-cam footage shows Hill was unarmed, had her hands up and was walking away.
There’s no way to spin this that it Brock was right because he had been victimized by scammers and was in the right. He wasn’t. He should’ve gotten the license plate of Hill’s car and contacted the police and let them work it out. Ohio is a Stand Your Ground state but that doesn’t mean it’s a license to kill. Brock has been charged with three counts of murder, one count of felonious assault and one count of kidnapping. He reportedly took her cell phone and prevent her from getting in her car to leave. Brock reportedly shot Hill as she was leaving once and twice when she was on the ground, authorities say.
This is why I think it’s silly see Jesse Plemons as some gun nut, with red sunglasses and an AR-15 in Civil War. Plemons, I’m sure is a good person, but he’s never come off in my opinion as a scary person. He has too much of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s gullibility about him. He might come off as a dick in a movie but he can’t play true villains. I think that’s part of the reason some major critics are calling “bullshit” on Civil War. Hey, let’s be honest. If this movie wasn’t made by a British filmmaker like Alex Garland and distributed by A24, which in my opinion is an overrated studio because most of their movies are the types that are way too pretentious, people wouldn’t be praising the movie as much nor talking about it. I hate to be critical, but American movie critics by and large love all filmmakers who aren’t Americans. All Uwe Boll has to do is to make a movie that is half-decent and the critics will eat it up even suggest he should get the good award nominations.
Just like The Hunt several years back, this is one of those movies that caused a big stir on its release, but it was quickly forgotten about within a year. That was a movie in which liberal-minded people kidnapped conservative people and hunted them. Most of the audience reviews for Civil War have been negative. I’ll just wait till it’s out on DVD so I can borrow it from the library or on streaming so I can watch it at home. There’s no point in paying $14 to see something that I’ve seen time and time again made by other filmmakers. It may be good. I might like it. Yet I look at this as a good marketing experiment rather than a movie, the same way it was done with Barbie.
To look to a movie as having all the answers or warning signs is no different than the people who celebrate the writings of Ayn Rand and want to make Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead a reality.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 