"Why is the future on film always so grim?"

[svensson]

On 3/24/2023 at 10:10 AM, soltakss said:

I am living in the dystopian future from my childhood.

• Walls built to keep poor people out of rich countries
• Refugees and migrants treated appallingly
• AI apparently stealing the livelihood from artists and writers
• Water shortages, widespread hunger
• Catastrophic climate events
• Paramilitary police everywhere
• Governments using extra-judicial killings with impunity
• Robots used for mundane tasks
• An underclass trapped by poverty and the privilege of others

 

Your points are well-taken, Sol, but it must be said that most of your points are historically 'normal'. Hunger/Thirst, unemployment, population migration, a trapped underclass, etc. have all been conditions that have existed since forever.

It should also be noted that more food and more clean water have been available than ever before, but population growth has exceeded those gains by a large margin. Add to this the politicization of want... where hunger and thirst are being used as methods of control... that we put a modern spin on it.

It is the part where technology isn't solving the problems, it's contributing to them that we reach the 'dystopian' levels.

[Darius West]

On 3/21/2015 at 1:47 PM, seneschal said:

The whole cyberpunk thing is basically a Marxist vision of the end of Western capitalistic civilization:  the mega-rich elite businessmen exploiting their hordes of mindless wage slaves until the oppressed proletariat, spurred by charismatic leaders, rises up to claim its freedom.  Hmmm, we've all seen how that worked out in Russia, China, Cambodia and Cuba.  Throw in 1960s and '70s era Cold War fears and you get the typical modern post-apocalyptic drama.  I helped my Mom study Marx and Engels for one of her college classes before I attempted to read Walter Gibson's novels.  When I broke open the latter, I said, "Hey, waitaminute!  I've read this all before (minus the cool gear)."

Sorry, that is riddled with inaccuracies seneschal.  I wouldn't argue that R Talsorian Games "Cyberpunk" the RPG has Marxist elements similar to what you discuss above, but that game has little to do with WILLIAM Gibson's novel Neuromancer, which is widely tagged as the novel that began Cyberpunk as a genre.  Gibson was about describing an urban punk aesthetic for a near future society, complete with its own slang, and technology that is able to extend the abilities of tech we already possessed in the 1980s.  The plot of the book is about two artificial intelligences becoming a godlike superconsciousness, not some banal Marxist revolution.  Everyone in Neuromancer is at heart a capitalist, and there is no voice given to class warfare, other than the acceptance of the notion that some people are poor, mainly because they are drug addicts, but nearly everyone in Neuromancer is some sort of drug addict.  If anything there is a sense of occasional urban grit combined with the artificial purity of the continuous airport lounge environment of the space station where the bulk of the plot takes place.  Sure Case is a hacker and Molly is a thug for hire, but they are both essentially mercenaries, not Marxist revolutionaries.  I don't think any of Gibson's subsequent novels are particularly Marxist either, but I haven't read them ALL, only most of them.

Edited March 27, 2023 by Darius West

[svensson]

Building on @Darius West's comment,

Um, isn't corporatization bringing some of Cyberpunk future nihilism into our society now? And how much worse will it be for our children.

As for Marx/Lenin/Stalin/Maoism's fears of capitalism, THEY wrecked their own environment just as badly as the capitalist West did theirs. The cleanup that Germany had to undertake in the former DDR after unification was mindblowing [unsecured nuclear reactor waste, for example] and the US paid for a lot of that cleanup [roughly 1/3 the total costs]. And there are entire cities in Russia and China that, were they in the West, would have been condemned and leveled as a hazmat site [Magnitogorsk, Russia for example]. So I think it's a misnomer to call the whole cyberpunk genre a nightmare of the Communists when it was the Communists that created a far nastier dystopia in their zones of control.

[Bill the barbarian]

Yep y'all, capitalism is under serious attack from dystopian godless commies, but not to worry, many here are ready to fend off these attacks, and take to their bunkers armed to the eyeballs... cupboards overflowing with tins of everything! And they are all experts on every form of combat from magic attack spells and javelins to thermonuclear handgrenades.

We are safe here!

[Bill the barbarian]

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

I don't think any of Gibson's subsequent novels are particularly Marxist either, but I haven't read them ALL, only most of them.

He's friggin great!

Hey Darius, you know you are ranting about an 8 year old post... hell, seneschal has not posted in over two years.

😉

 

[simonh]

I would agree Cyberpunk isn't a Marxist vision of the future as such, but a Marxist might say this is what you would get without Marxism. I'm not a Marxist though, so speculating.

I watched Bladerunner 2049 after hearing that Denis Villeneuve was developing Dune, and it was the first film of his I saw. I knew afterwards Dune was in safe hands.

I'm surprised Star Trek hasn't been referenced more in this topic. It's the obvious antidote to dystopian futures. It's not an ideal future by any stretch due to all the threats and wars and such, but those are all imposed from outside the Federation. Within it's own terms it is pretty much a utopia. Humans and their allies done good. I think there's also an argument some other SF is utopian in the same way, in that they posit that Utopias are actually achievable and even have been or will be achieved. In Stargate for example the Ancients achieved a utopian society. The planet Krypton was arguably utopian as well, at least as originally envisioned, and Kal-EL is trying to help humanity develop towards that state.

[Darius West]

On 3/28/2023 at 5:15 AM, Bill the barbarian said:

He's friggin great!

Hey Darius, you know you are ranting about an 8 year old post... hell, seneschal has not posted in over two years.

😉

 

LOL failed to read the date.  Still, seneschal's comments weren't accurate.

[Darius West]

On 3/28/2023 at 12:55 AM, svensson said:

Building on @Darius West's comment,

Um, isn't corporatization bringing some of Cyberpunk future nihilism into our society now? And how much worse will it be for our children.

Honestly, it would be a small step from corporatism to a corporate co-operative business model which would likely be more left wing than any society on the planet on the moment.  This was an important political feature of Bruce Sterling's "Islands in the Net" which I encourage you to read, as it is one of the few up-beat happy cyberpunk futures.  If corporations had a more-or-less flat hierarchy (by having the shares and voting rights transformed into a co-op), it could become a pretty decent model for arranging human affairs and encouraging sustainable prosperity.  The fact is, may corporate execs live in a measure of fear of how potentially powerful a co-op model could be, and how attractive such an outcome looks in comparison to the world atm.  This is potentially a way better model than, say, Marxism, which could critique Capitalism but actually produced atrocious outcomes, not only destroying their environment, but the rule of law and their people as well.

On 3/28/2023 at 12:55 AM, svensson said:

 So I think it's a misnomer to call the whole cyberpunk genre a nightmare of the Communists when it was the Communists that created a far nastier dystopia in their zones of control.

While Gibson did deal with the USSR in stories like "Red Star Winter Orbit", for the most part, the USSR was an irrelevance in his novels, which was surprisingly prescient imo.  I think, writing in the 1980s Gibson envisaged a world of the future that seemed to ignore the Soviet Union as a meaningful part of the world.  R Talsorian games' Cyberpunk included a USSR which had big clunky cyberware, but it was never a good fit, and always felt tacked on.  The fact was, it was harder to fight corporatism as a player character in Talsorian's Cyberpunk when you had the horror of the USSR or other murderous Communist regimes as the model for the alternative society you were fighting to create.  Thus the preference seemed to become some form of anarchy, which is also unsustainable, as some people like having little things like a reliable electricity and water supply, which anarchy can never provide, as it requires people to actually turn up to work without any incentive, or the means to acquire the skills required even if a hot bath was enough incentive.

The critiques we can make of Gibson's ideas is that he seemed unable to understand the role of the state, and assumed that National Governments would be superseded by corporate structures in a anarcho-libertarian free market, when such an unstructured system would collapse rapidly as Marxism correctly points out, Capitalism has a 40 year business cycle of three small crashes and three small recoveries, as well as one boom and one large crash, reliably over time, and few corporations could survive these vicissitudes without a strong government bailing them out when they screw up.  I am no fan of libertarianism, as I think it will promote the reintroduction of slavery as an inevitable outcome.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Darius West

[Qizilbashwoman]

19 hours ago, Darius West said:

it would be a small step from corporatism to a corporate co-operative business model

yeah, "eating the rich to achieve leftism" is technically one step but like, traditionally that's viewed as "a communist revolution" and frowned upon

[simonh]

On 3/29/2023 at 2:26 AM, Darius West said:

If corporations had a more-or-less flat hierarchy (by having the shares and voting rights transformed into a co-op), it could become a pretty decent model for arranging human affairs and encouraging sustainable prosperity.

Some such companies do exist and there are no real legal or regulatory obstacles to it, if anyone wants to do it they can, yet it remains extremely rare. I would have thought if it offered genuine advantages that you’d see such arrangements in use a lot more. I saw a lecture by an American economics professor once explaining how great it would be if you could set up a restaurant where all the employees had an equal share in ownership, and I thought ok, why don’t they do it? There’s nothing to actually stop you.

[g33k]

14 hours ago, simonh said:

... I saw a lecture by an American economics professor once explaining how great it would be if you could set up a restaurant where all the employees had an equal share in ownership, and I thought ok, why don’t they do it? There’s nothing to actually stop you.

I think it's largely because there's usually one person (or a very-small team, maybe 2-3) with the vision & ambition & resources to do it.

They put in the year (or more) of 100-hour (or more) work-weeks to get it launched; they invest their own $$$, take loans against their properties, etc.  Then it's theirs -- their effort, their financial risk, etc.  If they had waitstaff & line-cooks who were in on it from the beginning -- putting in long hours, etc -- then I would hope and expect those individuals also got ownership stakes in the restaurant (presumably they'd have been doing other stuff for those "long hours" before opening -- carpentry & decor &c).

In my area, there's a fair bit of county-level support (free seminars & services, etc) for would-be small businesses to launch.  I know of none aimed at cooperatives.

Edited March 30, 2023 by g33k

[g33k]

But to address the OP... because grimdark is fashionable.
It's what sells (mostly).

[simonh]

49 minutes ago, g33k said:

I think it's largely because there's usually one person (or a very-small team, maybe 2-3) with the vision & ambition & resources to do it.

In my area, there's a fair bit of county-level support (free seminars & services, etc) for would-be small businesses to launch.  I know of none aimed at cooperatives.

I think risk appetite is a major factor, few of us are willing to bet the farm in the way a lot of founders do, and if we did we’d want more say than just one vote out of many. Not every employee can keep up with all the factors that go into making every major decision. It’s just not efficient or practical.

If a bunch of people all turned up and applied for one of those small business programs as a group I doubt they’d be turned away. Similarly there’s nothing to stop the employees at a business clubbing together and buying it, maybe from a retiring owner. Such things do occasionally happen, so it’s clearly possible, but it’s a tiny number. In practice people largely just choose not to do it.

[simonh]

Posted in error.

Edited April 1, 2023 by simonh

[g33k]

On 3/30/2023 at 3:15 PM, simonh said:

I think risk appetite is a major factor, few of us are willing to bet the farm in the way a lot of founders do, and if we did we’d want more say than just one vote out of many. Not every employee can keep up with all the factors that go into making every major decision. It’s just not efficient or practical.

If a bunch of people all turned up and applied for one of those small business programs as a group I doubt they’d be turned away ...

As you say, they wouldn't be turned away.

At the same time, there aren't -- AFAIK -- any programs that address the specific concerns of the "co-op ownership" small business model.

FWIW, there were some studies a while back.  Outside of critical situations like emergency-response, firefighting, military expeditions, etc... most organizations made better decisions when the decisions were broadly-made by larger groups at the companies, rather then small circles of upper managers. (I'll have to track down the resources to cite, I'm just working from memory).

[svensson]

Getting back to the OP on this...

The answer is simple. Conflict sells tickets. Violence to resolve conflict sells more tickets. Simple solutions to complex problems [i.e. Our Hero shooting up just one building with only one bad guy responsible for The Whole Stinking Mess] sells even more tickets.

Society suddenly deciding to correct it's universal ills [a'la Star Trek] does not sell tickets.

Edited April 11, 2023 by svensson

[Agentorange]

On 4/2/2023 at 1:04 AM, svensson said:

Getting back to the OP on this...

The answer is simple. Conflict sells tickets. Violence to resolve conflict sells more tickets. Simple solutions to complex problems [i.e. Our Hero shooting up just one building with only one bad guy responsible for The Whole Stinking Mess] sell even more tickets.

Society suddenly deciding to correct it's universal ills [a'la Star Trek] does not sell tickets.

tis true...can you imagine.......

DRAMATIC MUSIC ( DUN DUH DUH ! )

The giant robot moved out of the spaceship

" Hi, we're representatives of a peaceful interstellar travelling race, we don't want your water, planet or women. we're here to trade useful things for whatever you think it's worth trading for"

"Well, that sounds splendid - I'm sure we can work something out. Would you care for a cup of tea and a jaffa cake ? "

"Sounds very civilised, mmmmm those are good.....jaffa cakes you say, are they for trade ?"

THE END
music fades over credits......

Edited April 10, 2023 by Agentorange

[Nozbat]

2 minutes ago, Agentorange said:

Would you care for a cup of tea and a jaffa cake ?

I'd have thought offering the insult of Jaffa cakes would have been an opening for all out war... to ensure that no-one else suffered from having to eat them

Thats just my opinion however. I concede that Jaffa cakes are very popular in my gaming circle and someone always brings a packet to the game

[Bill the barbarian]

31 minutes ago, Nozbat said:

I concede that Jaffa cakes are very popular in my gaming circle and someone always brings a packet to the game

Have you considered they are trying to tell you something?

 

[Agentorange]

7 hours ago, Nozbat said:

I'd have thought offering the insult of Jaffa cakes would have been an opening for all out war... to ensure that no-one else suffered from having to eat them

Thats just my opinion however. I concede that Jaffa cakes are very popular in my gaming circle and someone always brings a packet to the game

Jaffa cakes are the symbol of interstellar cooperation.

Their round shape represents the circle of life. The chocolate represents the sweetness of mutual coperation and the orange bit the warm glow of the sun shining on a new era of peace and prosperity.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Agentorange

[Nozbat]

3 hours ago, Agentorange said:

Their round shape represents the circle of life.

Arrrggghhh... I should have suspected this... Jaffa Cakes are connected in some way to Disney...

And (to come full circle and stay on topic) this is the answer to why the Future of film is always so grim...it's Disney! QED

(maybe I used the wrong preposition there... 'of' rather than 'on'.. but the premise is sound)

Edited April 11, 2023 by Nozbat

[PhilHibbs]

On 3/19/2023 at 5:14 PM, Ian Absentia said:

Are we still talking about Blade Runner 2049 seven years later?  If so, I feel that it's a film that, like it's predecessor, will be most appreciated in retrospect.

Bad sequels to great films will always be talked about, that doesn't say anything to the merits of the bad sequel. People still talk about Highlander 2, but only, like here, in the context of it spoiling the great film whose legacy it pooped all over.]

Back on the general subject:

• There is a market for dystopian films, films that shock and upset us, and the future is as good a place to put them as anywhere since you can make up your society whilst still claiming it is the real world. You don't have to put it in a fantasy world.
• As others have said, utopias are dull, and only work as a satisfying fiction if you break them at least a little. Iain M Banks's Culture series is a great example of this. The Culture is more or less a utopia, but the stories are mostly set around the edges where it interfaces with a larger, generally rather dystopian galaxy.

[Ian Absentia]

4 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

...but only, like here, in the context of it spoiling the great film whose legacy it pooped all over.

A quick aside, as I scan back over my previous post.  Did I compare the quality of a sequel to an original?  Did I state that one thing was better than another?  Did I insult anyone's taste in film?   No?  Okay, but I needed to check, because sometimes I miss this sort of thing and wanted to be sure that I didn't owe someone an apology.

Back on the general subject:

• It's an age-old lament.  Tragedy seems to outsell drama and comedy. much less utopianism, a subject in search of a genre.  I'm reminded of a quaint aphorism a neighbor told me over the fence once: Happiness is something you remember, not something you experience.
• Dystopianism, as is often the case with science fiction, is more a commentary on the present than it is the future.  And it's often an expression of conservativism and fear of change (the irony in light of commentaries about Blade Runner vs Blade Runner: 2049 are duly noted).  Nostalgia with a vengeance.  So dystopianism can serve as either a standard bearer for conservativism or a critique of it.

Perhaps next we should discuss whether or not an action movie requires violence and bloodshed. (Compare and contrast: The Matrix vs Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.)

!i!

[Baron Wulfraed]

8 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Bad sequels to great films will always be talked about, that doesn't say anything to the merits of the bad sequel. People still talk about Highlander 2, but only, like here, in the context of it spoiling the great film whose legacy it pooped all over.]

• Highlander
• Highlander 2: There should only have been one
• Highlander 3: The Apology

Though #2 did have some great bits with Connery.