@jaztech73
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Great eyes Tallis. The Matrix is an amazing ecological feat, and I think it would be considered dystopian eco-modernism.
Remember that the AI created the Matrix solely for power purposes: During the war between AI and humans, one side (humans conveniently don’t remember who but I bet the machines do) “scorched the sky” and humans though this would make the machines die out.
Morpheus: “We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.”
Considering the Matrix from an eco-modernist lens shows that conscious AI– a purely artificial lifeform– transcends the cyborgian fuzziness that Haraway attributes to androids and other man-machine hybrids. The AI can treat humans like just any another organism in nature (as humans used to treat plants, bacteria, etc). Necessarily for its survival, but only if cultivated properly.
In a sense, humans avoided utter destruction by making themselves a necessary resource for the machines. The machines then became the masters of nature.
🙂 You are Yummy.
I love this movie and yes!! Great example! Food-tech is a great example of eco-modernism and one of the big controversies. The unintended effects of Flints’ inventions are a humorous representation of the real world effects you call out like introducing invasive species.
Also an aside, the premise of this movie is also a great critique of the tech-as-missions phenomena where a crazy inventor (or a bunch of students) descends on some remote island or poor village and decides their way of life is too primitive and must be fixed. And oh look, we just happen to have an invention for this…
Snowpiercer comes to mind.
As an overview, Snowpiercer is about a train carrying the last of humanity through an ice age. The premise is that the ice age was caused by 79 countries who banded together and released a chemical into the air to combat global warming. It worked…too well.
The train is an artificial self-sustaining biosphere, and the rich live much the same as they did before in the first class car. Food is grown hydroponically, waste is recycled, and the train is powered by its own momentum (hey its scifi). The world’s hardiest pests (cockroaches) are ground into gelatinous protein bars to feed the refugees in the back of the train.
The examples from Wandering Earth and Anno2070 are good depictions of salvaging the planet in a post-apocalyptic (or near apocalypse) scenario.
I’m not sure about the Black Panther. It is true that they used vibranium as an artificial means to build most of their civilization (except the all-natural, organic heart shaped herb!) They didn’t do it to preserve the environment necessarily, but avoiding detection by the outside world necessitated minimal and efficient use of natural resources. One could argue that the “Wakandan way” is ancient, O.G. eco-modernist.
I agree with Levi, there are so many good sci-fi influenced songs out there!
I’ll add Janelle Monae’s “Cold War” to the mix. Her album the ArchAndroid is constantly referred to when talking about “Afrofuturism,” or depictions of the future that center Africa, or people and cultures of the African diaspora. I also love the music video of Many Moons, which features the “messianic android” on display with different models you can customize and buy.
“It’s a Cold War…”
The Cold War was a war fought with science and avatars. Nobody wanted to repeat the nuclear disaster of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but Russia and U.S. still had serious philosophical beef with each other. This tense period inspired so much of the conflict-but-not-war scifi, like the class favorite, Star War. Like the Jedi and the Sith in Star Wars, US & Russia never really fight each other directly. The Space Race was more than a contest, it was the race to gain the high ground–orbit and then the moon. On the ground, other nations were used as avatars to fight proxy wars on the side of capitalism or communism, democracy or autocracy– those soldiers and rebel fighters could be disposable nameless faceless drones, unlike the heroic American/Russian Soldier.
<Do you know what you’re fighting for?> Cindi Mayweather, archandroid asks <This is a Cold War, you better know what you’re fighting for>
<When you step outside, you spend your life fighting for your sanity>
The music video is a close-up tight shot of Janelle/Cindi — reminiscent of a clandestine broadcast from a secret base. You’re fighting for your sanity, she reminds the listener, hunkered in their bunker, radios clutched close to their heads.
<If you want to be free /Below the ground is the only place to be
‘Cause in this life / You spend time running from depravity>In the Cold War theme, below the ground has two possibilities: 1) in a bomb shelter: this is hardly freedom, but if safety is your freedom, then cut off from the world is the way to go. 2) dead. Well that’s kindof a bummer, but it’s reality. Everyday is a fight and in life, everyone is a soldier. Your personal end-credits don’t run until your journey is done.
Right around 1:30 is where this song gives me the chills. The peppy beat is like a call to action (let’s go!) but in the video Janelle looses it and breaks into tears. That’s like seeing your lieutenant choke up when she’s giving you orders. What can’t she sing?
<May all evil stumble as it flies / All the tribes come and the mighty will crumble/ We must brave this night and have faith in love>
Does she not believe this prayer? This is the grand d-day speech that all the great leaders give before the final battle!– in Pacific Rim before they take the fight to the kaijiu, in Star Wars before they attack the DeathStar, in Independence Day before they try to stop up an alien warship with a tiny fighter plane…when victory is not assured, but humanity’ll give it all we got anyway. But JM can’t quite keep up the brave face…
*J breaks off* <I’m trying to find my peace / I was always told there was something wrong with me / And it hurts my heart / Lord have mercy>
Cut to reality. This song is about the “psychosis” of dehumanization that Black women experience through the intertwined forces of racism, sexism, colorism. There’s no actual declaration of war–but it’s a battle nonetheless. Janelle Monae isn’t pretending to cry in the video, she actually is. In interviews, she recalls that the emotions she’s visualizing in the video caused a “chain reaction” of tears she couldn’t control. This music video was actually supposed to be sound check but the entire crew decided that this was the version that needed to go along with this song. This was the face of the resistance. Just like Cinna used Katniss’ real tears to convince the districts to rebel. This video is also was the first time you see the face of the ArchAndroid.
I actually was listening to this song around mid-summer in 2020, as the protests against police brutality went on and on, juxtaposed against physical and verbal violence against protestors, then armed militias threatening elected officials, calls for voter intimidation, news about greater impacts of COVID on people of color, so so many codewords used to refer to people whose safety, health and lifelihoods were not as important… it just went on and on. This song really made the moment and all the imagery and scenery and emotion make sense. This is a Cold War…
This is a great example. I never knew the background behind this song.
Question: Is the story really that he escaped in a robot costume? The lyrics sound like he swapped his body with the robot body to escape, which is a lot more desperate. <machines to save our lives, machines dehumanize>
<with parts made in japan, i am the modern man> / <My heart is human, my blood is boiling, my brain is IBM>
It’s also interesting to see what part of him needed to stay human in order for him to actually accomplish his mission of escape. In a Technology Philosophy class I took in undergrad our professor asked us to point to the part of our body where our soul lived. Most people pointed to their heads (brain/mind), but I thought about… what about your heart?
Great example! Your right, I think song is how most ppl think. Who cares who reads my mind, data, emails, etc. It’s just “normal” stuff. I wonder if you changed the lyrics just slightly, “If the
governmentbig tech companies could read my mind, they’dknow I’m thinkingsell my thoughts of you.” There, fixed it for you. Welcome to 2020JP, interesting song choice. Baffling why aliens would deceive themselves by changing their memories, but maybe being human can’t be faked? You’ve got to really believe it!
Or maybe to avoid detection by the Thought Police?
Can you explain more about how this song brought up themes from the Black Panther. Which themes stood out to you? If I remember correctly, Kendrick Lamar curated a lot of the soundtrack for the movie. Why did this song stand out to you in particular?
An interesting detail about the musical score composer: “Göransson had initially approached the score with the idea that music in Wakanda could be anything due to its being a fictional country, but discovered that “music from Africa is a language” used for storytelling, with every instrument and different musical rhythm given meaning, and wanted to ensure that this was reflected since the country is still clearly in Africa.”
Interesting parallels
The “coca-cola sometimes war” also reminds me of the concept of “soft power.” Hard power is using military or economic force to make another country do what you want, but soft power makes the “American way” more attractive to the people of other countries so they willingly (they think) support that country.
This is a really interesting video choice! I agree that “when world’s collide” is the main motif.
It seems like the lyrics aren’t really related to the music video, so the MV is more stylistic. But the ending scene where the band lead is “caught” and then murders the presumable king of whatever-this-is seems to bring it all together. They have Dragon-ballZ meets Green-Lantern meets Stars Wars energy battle and of course the band leaders’ energy easily overcomes the alien king. I suppose this is the meaning of the name “Powerman” level “5000”?
So world’s colliding isn’t a good thing. Amid the images of alien diversity and general spaceyness, Powerman is coming to take over your world.
Levi, you make a really good point about the historical nature of “patrolling” polling places. Even if the stated purpose is to somehow prevent fraud, just the suggestion that there may be an armed presence is enough to deter someone new to voting or who doesn’t want to be in close proximity to assault rifles. There’s actually a marketing concept called FUD, “fear, doubt, uncertainty” where if you can just get people to question whether something is good or bad, then they’ll act out of fear rather than basis in reality.
It really baffles me why we don’t just have a voting app that everyone downloads or that you can access at your local library or clerk office. I mean really, we can bank, date, receive medical advice, and be convicted of a crime through our phones but we can’t check a box and be assured that it gets counted correctly? :\
Adam, you found a really interesting counterpoint article! It’s always super interesting to read news from “outsiders” like the BBC or US news commenting on North – South Korea relations, because it usually reflects the utopia that *that* country wants, rather than how Koreans actually feel. I saw an article that said the North did apologize after all, which is shockingly rare.
Jacob’s post reminds me of this prediction video from 2004, that imagined “Googlezon” in 2014. I guess they’re not far off!
These are very good points. With respect to medical technologies, the need for speed vs safety is something we can see playing out right now. Most coronavirus research is exempt from the normal process of review and validation that is normally required for virus testing and vaccine approval.
On the flip side, even in normal research there is a benevolence clause built in– if during clinical trials (human testing), the intervention (drug, tech, vaccine, etc) is found to be so effective in preventing death or disability that it would more harmful not to give it to everyone, then the experimental protocols require that everyone in the trial get the most effective version of the drug.
The challenge with technology interventions is how to define and recognize “benefit” and “harm” in a way that lets us make these kinds of decisions.
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