Children of Men; Humanity in the posthuman postapocalyspe

“Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.” Pslam 90:3…

Children of Men is about a world without hope, order or morality. A world nearing it's end because women have lost the ability to have children. A world of  terrorism, immigration, deportation, xenophobia, of police brutality and terror. A world that may not be so far removed from our own. A not-so-distant fictitious future that is uncannily hard to distinguish from what we're making of ours. It is a story that lets the characters slowly fade into the background, transforming a message of hope in the strength of mankind into a posthumanist discourse that seeks to level the hierarchy and the boundaries between the human and the non-human.

Lets begin with the plot and genre.

As soon as it opens, Children of Men sets itself apart from its fellow dystopian science fiction movies. Though  it is set in the future (2027) and the basic premise (the end of the human race) suggests it's a science fiction film, it doesn't focus on the scientific reasons for infertility nor does it focus on a cure. The narrative journey that Theo takes is that of a conventional Road Movie. The focus on dialogue is more associated with drama. Some scenes are constructed to look like war movies, and the long takes and lack of close-ups in the filming style are borrowed from the documentary genre.Children of Men goes beyond being a generic hybrid - it's a work of bricolage.

The first shot is a shot of an audience. Of us. They gaze into a television, receiving news of 'Baby Diego's' death- the youngest person in the world. They learn the news the same way that we do; though the media. And here Afonso Cuaron establishes one of the main tropes of the film: foreground-background.

The lead story of Children of men is the story of Dr. Theo Faron, an apathetic government bureaucrat who regains his roots as a political activist after he sees that there is still hope left. His ex-wife reconnects with him, now the leader of an activist (or terrorist, depending on the perspective) organization named the Fishes. He's charged with safely delivering an illegal immigrant to a group called "The Human Project". It all comes down to one thing; Kee, the immigrant, is pregnant, and her child is the hope of humanity. This is the foreground. Just as the audience gazes single-mindedly into the television, allowing the background to go unnoticed, so would  we allow ourselves to ignore the background as we crowd around the main story. But the background is not to be ignored.

"Nearly everything is a metaphor for the main character. The way I tend to approach a film is that character and background are equally important; one informs the other. — Alfonso Cauron."

It is a commentary. As we follow along the linear path that is Theo's story,  the camera becomes increasingly curious, repeatedly preoccupied with what's going on in the background, wandering off and lingering on things our main character doesn’t stop to notice.

Britain is the last society with a functioning governmental body left in the world. The only country still under stable control. Only it's at the cost of totalitarianism, fascism, and the dehumanization of immigrants that are desperate to flee the chaotic world outside Britain's closed borders. The conditions of this stability come into question though this curious camera. It seems the more we look into the background, the more we understand this commentary. So when Alfonso Cuaron builds his world, he does it with minimal distractions. Aside from a few, subtle futuristic gadgets, the world is largely recognizable; a reflection of our own. He renders his world with alarming realism and minimal use of sci-fi futurism. This is what sets it apart. There's this use of parallelism, this powerful device weaves our world with the world of Children of Men in very explicit ways. It grapples with heavy topics, questioning and exposing the fractures of western modes of thought.

Powerful imagery is embedded all throughout. Nearly every frame is imbued with precise, terrifying details, from TV screens to graffiti-covered walls to the newspaper headlines and propaganda posters. The refugee camps strongly resemble and are meant to remind audiences of torture establishments such as Guantanamo bay, Abu Ghraib or the Holocaust. It seems one of the oldest democracies, in the face of a refugee crisis, has slipped into something reminiscent of Nazi Germany; hunting down "fugees" "like cockroaches", rounding them up like animals in cages, sending them to refugee camps to be deported or even shot- these scenes have The Libertines' 'Arbeit Macht Frei' playing in the background. 'Arbeit Macht Frei' is a German phrase meaning "work makes you free". It was placed over the entrance to numerous Nazi concentration camps. Contain those symbolic overtones and images of the Holocaust. It shows how people can become when the government orchestrates their fears.

In a scene where the man characters are arriving at one of the detention camp, there is fleeting, but unmistakable allusion. Though the window a hooded detainee can be seen- It's the infamous hooded prisoner tortured and abused at the Abu Ghraib prison, wearing a poncho and forced to stand with his arms outstretched for hours. In the same scene detainees are stripped to their underwear, being frightened by dogs- just like at Abu Ghraib. 

There are many, many more examples. The newspapers are filled with headlines about nuclear fallouts, military attacks, religious fundamentalism - based terrorist attacks, backlash against refugees and immigrants, mass suicides, fatal fertility drugs, mosques being put under surveillance, allegations of tortures of journalists, medical malpractice, political coup d'etat and dirty bombs.

Allusions to real-life events and organisations like the homeland security are subtly hidden for those looking to find. Seen though the screens of TVs there is both fictional and real-life footage used such as 9/11. These themes are by cross-referencing these contemporary images, creating extraordinary plausibility. Already we see all of these events unfolding before us in our own world.

Quietus is a publicly-marketed suicide drug seen on many of the commercials of TV; it speaks volumes of the utter hopelessness that has gripped the world. This cross-referencing extends to the arts and to culture, propagating the themes. For example Boticelli's "Birth of Venus" is referenced when Kee first reveals her pregnancy. She stands in the same position, symbolizing maternity.

At the "Arc of Arts", where Theo goes to visit his cousin, a pig floats above the factory-like landscape, a reference to Pink Floid's album "Animals", which in turn referenced George Orwell's book "Animal Farm", which accused, through satire, socialism and authoritarianism.

 

  Picasso's Guernica (1937) painting- a painting depicting the realities of war, in itself showing a wailing woman holding her dying son in her arms. 

By the end of the movie there's a scene of a woman wailing and holding her dead son in her arms, in the same way as a photograph taken (from real life) during the Balkan wars in 1990 by Georges Merillion- it itself referencing the sculpture "La Pieta" by Michaelangelo,

All of these subtle incredibly well inter-linked references work together, whether ancient of current, to immerse one in complex narrative and commentary. The way that, in our own lives, the displacement of immigrant refugees and tightening of borders, the unchecked growth of capitalist enterprises and the prioritized agendas of narrow, conservative interests are intimately interlinked, so are the references in this movie. They allow one to see what they normally can't- see the world naked, see the world of the posthuman apocalypse through the eyes of objectivity.

Technology and us, an informal discussion

Plenty has been written about our interactions with technology, and how it affects our relationships and mannerisms. I write, not to reiterate what has been said, but to give account of my own experience. I believe it is human nature to dislike change, but for us  younger generations it's been a seamless introduction into the world of technology. We've grown extremely accustomed to it, to the point where forgetting one's phone at home feels like a great loss and huge inconvenience. Literature about the great changes technology has brought is from the point of view of those older generations, more often than not in a negative light. It isn't unfair to point out the negatives of any change, and to that I'd strongly argue that the positives far outweigh the negatives of our relationships with technology. In my case, the situation goes like this:

I grew up in Mexico. From a young age I was introduced to computers; my father was an IT technician, completely immersed in this emerging new world of computers. When my family moved to the U.S, the biggest challenge was, not the loss of friends or the loss of familiarity, but the loss of communication. Language was lost. But here in the U.S I began reading books, a long and immersive series that made me, my writing and my speech, eloquent and well-spoken. Though I had only been living in the U.S for  a year, I moved from a beginner "ESL" (English as a second language) class, to a Pre-AP advanced English class. I couldn't understand the slang and everyday speech of my fellow classmates, but I understood most of every writing I came across. This series I was reading was the beginning to my relationship with an online group of people that, to this day I still talk with and consider very close friends. It was a roleplay group, and we ALL had one thing in common; we loved to read the same book series.

Many of us lived in different continents, let alone states or countries. Our mother languages ranged from Chinese, Spanish and Dutch to Punjabi, Japanese and Russian. It was, and still is, a literate roleplay centered around the world that we're all familiar with, with our own characters, our backstories and our own writing.

The thing that struck me the hardest was how easily we accepted the relationship we had formed with each other. We'd never seen each other in person (though we'd have skype videocalls on Friday movie nights and knew the names of all each other's pets' names). We didn't bat an eye when we had to calculate for timezones for a site-wide meeting, we learned to do 3D modeling and texturing to make a private map online for our characters, learned HTML coding to make our websites better and communicated with each other at almost all times of the day, excited about how our characters would interact with each other. Our families would grow concerned that we were always glued to our computers, talking with these 'internet friends'. It seemed like, to them, our friends were almost imaginary. It was strange, to us, that they found this strange. It was natural to us- there was nothing imaginary about each other. To us, there was no difference between the friends we saw at school to the friends we saw online. One of the things that attracted me the most to this group was how transparent we were. Almost always, especially with other roleplaying groups, there tends to be a distinction between a person and their "avatar"- an idealized version of themselves. But in this roleplay we were either IC (In Character) or OOC (Out of character). We had many characters; old, young, dead, alive. When in character we committed faithfully to their personalities, lives and manners. But when outside of them we didn't feel the need to roleplay yet another character. We were happy to be ourselves, sometimes even more so than in the offline world.

All of these relationships that, for 6 years, I've formed, would've never been possible without the use of my laptop. It's a strange, yet (for us) a natural relationship.

A reading: Simulacrum and simulacra (Notes)

1.The desert of the real
The essay begins with a rather cryptic metaphor; that of the map and the territory. A map so detailed it lays down on the territory and as the empire whose the map belonged to falls to ruin and the territory becomes a desert, the map decays, becoming part of the territory. It isn't part of the desert, but it is perceived as. In our world, (a world of the hyperreal) the map becomes more important than the territory- it precedes it. It isn't the map that is decaying, it's reality! Our desert isn't the desert of the empire, but "the desert of the real" [the Matrix!]

2. Something Changed
But something about the relationship between the map and territory is gone; in present day, there isn't even a difference between the two. There used to be something that separated the two, now simulators make all the real "coincide with their simulations". Simulations are now hyperreal; more real than real. The simulation of the map can be reproduced over and over. The map and the territory don't coexist, mirror each other or create a contrast between real and abstract. The territory is taken, miniaturized and reproduced in mass. The original loses meaning. It doesn't have to be reproduced- now we can produce from copies, substitute the real with "a perfect descriptive machine that provides all the signs of the real", but that isn't even a copy of the real.

3. Something Threatening
There is something worse about simulation. It doesn't simply pretend to be the original. A person can pretend to be ill; they'd only be masking their health, they're not really ill. But simulating illness means presenting physical symptoms of illness, not just faking them. How can that be treated then? Modern medicine can only treat illnesses that are real, and psychology treats those that are not physical.

4. The simulation masks nothing at all.
There is something threatening about simulation; the threat that what it is simulating is not real, or there at all. Religion forbids for the reproduction or images of a deity. "l forbade any simulacrum in the temples because the divinity that breathes life into nature cannot be represented" The image of God is said to be unable to be represented. But it is, and those who go on a rage to destroy those images are afraid of a "destructive truth" that simulations of God represent nothing. "knowing also that it is dangerous to unmask images! since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them."

5. There are different types of simulations
Those that reflect the real, those that hide the real, those that hide that there is no real, and those that are just pure simulations. Didney Worl is eeeevil. It presents itself as imaginary to hide that outside of it is not reality, but more simulation ohhhhhh, all of the U.S and L.A is hyperreal. It makes you believe that childishness belongs inside of it and is absent outside, when in reality it exists everywhere. You're adults both inside and outside, and children both inside and outside of Disney world.

6. Watergate; the cynical version
Basically, watergate scandal and disneyland are the same... Watergate is just a way of rejuvenating moral and political principle by enunciating scandal and paying homage to the law. It succeeded in making itself a scandal, and masking the fact that there is no difference between facts and the denunciation of facts. Wow.

The Matrix; Contesting Reality

“Welcome, to the Desert of the Real" says Morpheus, quoting Jean Baudrillard's Simulacrum and Simulacra, a book seeking to examine the relationships among reality, symbols, and society involved in constructing an understanding of shared existence. A post-modern book about the decay of reality and it's replacement with simulated images- The idea of a copy without an original. Enter, The Matrix;  A movie about reflection, and perspective, truth and illusion.

"If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see," Explains Morpheus in the 'loading program' scene, "then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain." This is one of the big questions of the movie. Morpheus explains to Neo that what makes something real is the perception of it. If reality is subjective then what is the difference? This concept traces it's inspiration back to philosophy. In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato contends that a person born and raised (trapped their whole lives) in a cave, only able to see the wall in front of them, would regard the shadows they glimpse ahead of them as real, and would have no expectation of there being a world outside of the cave. Why would they? They've never known or seen anything else, not the merest idea. It's the basic idea of the Matrix, how do we know what real is, how do we define it? How do we know what our reality really is? In Plato's experiment, a prisoner taken outside of the cave would look out unto the world and be overwhelmed, his eyes having to adjust to sunlight for the first time. In Plato's Analysis of the Sun, the sun is a metaphor for "the nature of reality, and the truth concerning it". The solution to ignorance is enlightenment, and light itself is truth. Neo is trapped in a false reality created by a computer program in the same way that the chained prisoners in the cave are. Both of these revolve around the metaphysical question of what is and isn't real. So when Neo wakes up for the first time and sees reality he says "My eyes hurt," to which the answer is "Because you've never used them." There is a similarity in the way that both the prisoner and Neo must accept.

Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation:
Near the beginning of The Matrix Neo stashes his illegal software inside a hollowed-out copy of a book by French postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard titled Simulacra and Simulation. This is one of the principal inspirations behind the movie. "The entire concept of the Matrix films could be interpreted as a criticism of the unreal consumer culture we live in, a culture that may be distracting us from the reality that we are being exploited by someone or something, just as the machines exploit the humans in the Matrix for bioelectricity."  sim·u·la·crum: an image or representation of someone or something. an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute. The Matrix is a simulacra of life. "the Desert of the Real" is what people call the outside world- one completely different from the simulated world.

About Fight Club; Frustrations and Capitalism

Fight Club may seem to be a movie about punching. A closer look, however, will reveal an expression of frustration with American capitalist society. Go to college, now what? Get a job, now what? Get married, now what? Have kids, now what? "We are the middle children of history, raised by television to be believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact [...] so don't fuck with us."

Fight Club begins with a nameless narrator working a job to buy things he doesn't need- completing himself "one Ikea shelf at a time." It all comes to a stop when his apartment blows up. He's forced to live with one Tyler Durden in a crumbling mansion the complete opposite of what he's been living. From small, purposeful and orderly to dirty, disorganized, and wastefully big.

One small detail. Tyler Durden isn't real.

He's a figment of the narrator's insomniac mind- he's all the ways the narrator wishes he could be. A conjuring, able to do what the narrator is unable to. The narrator IS Tyler Durden; a man with a mission to destroy the false comforts of American society and consumer culture; a man who is tired of being emasculated and by capitalism, tired of being owned by his possessions. Dissatisfied, angry. "I see the strongest and the smartest men who have ever lived [...] and these men are pumping gas and waiting tables." These men will never be famous, will never be anything but waiters, trash collectors and convenience store workers. But that's what they're supposed to do. "Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need." It's an empty, consumerist society. For the characters in Fight Club, this rationalized world is dehumanizing, and emasculating. It's an isolated, single-serving lifestyle. Everything is small and disposable, including the people the narrator meets.

"This is what all those people must've felt before I filed them as statistics in my reports" the narrator says, after experiencing a car crash for the first time and realizing his way of rationalizing people as statistics, not humans. Identity destroyed by modern life. One that has fractured the narrator into two very, very different people, one repressed and one freed. But Tyler and the narrator's underground Fight club turns docile, meek and consumerist men into a force of chaos and anarchy better known as Project Mayhem; Tyler Durden's mission and army, all home-grown from what began as a simple, innocent Fight Club to allow these men the expression of masculinity they were denied outside (copious amounts of manly man violence). "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile." Through this speech, Tyler turns the dissatisfaction of his generation into a mantra, transforming it from disappointment into empowerment. "You're not how much money you've got in the bank. You're not your job. You're not your family, and you're not who you tell yourself." They're fighting back. Order is bad. Project Mayhem's ultimate goal—a return to a primitive lifestyle—would be the ultimate equalizer. Everyone would have to learn to survive based on their own merits.

Masculinity. What does it have to do with capitalism? It's the way Tyler sees it; consumerism is an assault on masculinity. The men in Fight Club feel degraded by their jobs- fearful that society will turn them into women. Bob is the physical embodiment of this; once a body builder, Bob looses his testicles to testicular cancer and as a result of hormone therapy grows "bitch tits" and is now is weak and goes to support clubs where he hugs other people and cries. Girly things. The culture surrounding this Lost Generation is very much influenced by absentee fathers. "We're a generation of men raised by women". The whole movie constantly addresses the fear and possibility of losing one's balls, both under Tyler's rule and under capitalist rule, perhaps suggesting that the same way Tyler and the narrator are two sides of the same coin, so is capitalism and anarchy,

Postfeminism in Mad Max

2015 saw the revival of an old trilogy; that of the iconic Max Max. Fury Road, this new installment in the series, offers a stark and surprisingly postfeminist change. It puts a woman at the center of the story, one that gets to overthrow a patriarchal tyrant. By comparing this radical change to the three older (1979) movies, and taking into account that they were all- including Fury Road- written by the same director, it's easier to see a cultural shift.

The original Mad Max was about the stereotypical macho post-apocalyptic survivalist lone wolf. In the words of Noah Berlatski from The Establishment, "Director George Miller’s series is devoted to manly men beating their manly chests while grunting and butting chests and cars and other manly bits. Tough guy, glowering-cowboy-biker-machismo and leather, and guns, and brutal death in gladiatorial combat: That’s what Mad Max was originally all about, not feminism." The various communities into which Max drifts in the second and third films are also anchored by women and the associated children. Men are sometimes in charge — but all-male communities in these films tend to be gangs, not civilizations. Men man the barricades of civilization to protect women from the barbaric manly hordes amidst the grinding of gear shifts, biceps, and gender stereotypes. 

Fury Road is a radical break. In this post apocalyptic world women are characters can hold on their own. They are on the forefront of the story and Max is an unlucky bystander that gets caught up in the mess, eventually helping Furiosa and the other characters escape from slavery. Fury Road is a film that actively deflates one of misogynists' most treasured fantasies (and boy did they cry out in displeasure when the movie came out). The apocalypse is supposed to be a place where women’s freedom goes to die, yet this movie turns that trope on its head. Immortan Joe’s harem of women are actively fighting for their freedom. “WE ARE NOT THINGS” they write on the walls of their prison. 

“Fury Road,” explains Adi Robertson from The Verge “explicitly balances Max's journey with a story about women and women's agency. The real threat is that even the women who are everything anti-feminists smugly predict — enslaved, fragile, sheltered — can be brave and competent.” There's a feminist concept usually summed up as "the patriarchy hurts men too" — men die in war, men die in all manners relating to their expected gender roles, pushed into high-risk jobs and defined by their earning capacity. It's the idea that our gender stereotypes end up limiting everyone, not just women. Fury Road plays this out very literally. Villain Immortan Joe's patriarchal society privileges and is run by men. His "warboys" seem well above women in the food chain, set to enter Valhalla when they die. They're also short-lived, interchangeable, and desperate for approval. Nux, a young, brainwashed warboy, has a fragile and violent masculinity that makes him deadly, but the moment he slips up, he loses everything. "Who killed the world?" Is written on the walls of the vault prison, and and it is said by Angharad just before she threw out Nux from the war rig: 


Angharad: Breeding stock! (relating to them)  Battle fodder! (relating to him)

Nux: No, I am awaited!

Angharad: You're an old man's battle fodder!

Angharad: Killing everyone and everything!

Nux: We're not to blame!

Angharad: Then who killed the world?

This line is directed at the ruthless dictators and their brutal followers based on power and aggression, incarnated by Immortan and his admirers. Directed toward the system that led to the war-torn, nuclear-bombed, water-lacking and dystopian world they're now in.


Maybe most importantly, the movie doesn't just try to avoid making women's subjugation titillating (think Game of Thrones), it rarely gives the audience the satisfaction of seeing it at all. And that's a huge step. George Miller created characters that are empowered. Not victims, or sideckicks, or damsels in distress. The women here, though they have been terribly wronged, are intelligent, fierce, strong and yet still loving and compassionate. 


It doesn't end there. Fury Road takes feminism a step further into Post-feminism, showing Max and Furiosa as equal partners.

In this scene Max fails at hitting his target twice in a row and so accepts that his female companion, Furiosa, should take the shot because of her superior skill. it is uncommon for the male hero of an action film to hand the reins over to a woman when women generally are the overly-sexualized sidekick in this genre. But it's not just women-empowerment. It's equality. Max and Furiosa treat each other with equal respect, not blind but not influenced by the gender of each other. They treat each other more like brothers in arms. They work in powerful, seamless teamwork. "Throughout the film, Max works with Furiosa as a partner. She doesn’t forbid him to participate because of his gender, or claim superiority. He, in turn, doesn’t patronize or condescend her, or challenge her authority because he sees her as lesser, and extends the same common courtesy to the film’s other females." - Cinemablography.

 Max also serves as a good intersectional feminist role model for men because he never acts entitled to receive sexual favors from Furiosa or the wives as compensation for his assistance, and never makes unwanted sexual advances on a woman. In fact, Max never makes any sexual advances. He proves that women and men can just be friends and\or work together without things becoming physical. It's beyond feminism; it's post-feminism.

(Examples: The roles they play are equal in stance. They help each other, and in one scene Max even plays the nurturing role as he fights to save Furiousa's life.)

Blade Runner: A Post Modern Example

Visiting a film site for Ridley Scott's 1982 Blade Runner reminded me of what post-modernism exemplified; the media-saturated world where the line between reality and media was ostensibly blurred. Where human, replicants, real and manufactured are virtually indistinguishable. Replicants themselves are pastiche; replicating humans, yet being synthetic. Los Angeles in the future is bleak and decayed, a vision devoid of hope. Truth and facts are temporal and subjective. It's a world where science, technology and progress has all but failed society and allowed for the future to be nothing but a polluted, over-crowded industrial dystopia where the rich escape off-world. The future does not realize an idealized. aseptic technological order. The way that postmodernism reflects society's feelings of alienation, insecurity and uncertainties regarding identity, history, progress and truth are displayed starkly in this world composed of a patchwork of styles and fads, with no past or future to mark or solidify its history, and no present to hold on to. It's a society of spectacle and visuals, devoid of any depth. A society replete with identity crisis; the city itself doesn't have an identity (it looks like Hong Kong, Tokyo or New York; it could be anyplace), and replicants don't do either. They have no past to speak of, and a future where only death approaches.

Blade Runner contains post-modern aesthetics as well, showing a hybridity in cultures, clothes, and everything in between.  Even the language is pastiche: "city speech" is a "mishmash of Japanese, Spanish, German, what have you." The postmodern aesthetic of Blade Runner is thus the result of recycling, fusion of levels, discontinuous signifiers, explosion of boundaries, and erosion. The walls of Deckard's apartment are reminiscent of an ancient Mayan palace. Pastiche, as an aesthetic, incorporates dead styles; it attempts to recover past history. The Tyrell corp building resembles Egyptian pyramids, rather than a high-tech modern building. It's bicolage.

The narrative itself (whether emotions are programmed or humanity manufactured, and what separates human and machine when the line is so unclear) is postmodern. Postmodern philosophers like Jean Baudrillard ask the same questions about the hyperreal, and dealing with a world ripe with imagery over the individual. Pastiche and the exhibitionism of the visual celebrate the dominance of portrayal and the replacement of the portrayed in the era of postindustrialism. The postindustrial society is the "society of the spectacle," living in the "ecstasy of communication." Addressing this aspect of postmodernism, Jean Baudrillard speaks of a twist in the relationship between the real and its reproduction. "The real is not what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced . . . the hyperreal . . . which is entirely in simulation." In the narrative space of Blade Runner "All of Los Angeles . . . is of the order of hyperreal and simulation."

The narrative "invention" of the replicants is almost a literalization of Baubrillard's theory of postmodernism as the age of simulacra and simulation.

Blade Runner, as a film, utilizes visual media and quotes from all sorts of sources, be it Pulp Fiction, Chinatown-like neon streets or Greek, Roman and Mayan architecture, time, history, high/low culture and the relationships and differences between them are in a state of confusion.

There is, at all times, a pervading sense of dark irony and self-awareness that reminds us of the current, post-modern era of cynicism.

Monster Theory

The monstrous body; a metaphor for the cultural body. The physical shape of cultural unease, constraints, fears and taboos. Cohen asserts their connection with places and periods of times. The monster is a projection of the society that engenders them, revealing and waiting to be read. The fact that it is made up of a society's fears and anxieties means that it will be ever-present, never to fully disappear though it might have been seemingly defeated. Society will always fear something.

So what makes a monster monstrous? Difference. It is within human nature to fear what is different. To think of it as danger. Those who are most likely to be turned into monsters are those who are different and threaten the society set by white men; women and those of another ethnicity. Whether it be Native Americans (turning them into monsters within stories to fuel the political machine that was Manifest Destiny), black people (whose only difference was skin color, yet were seen as savage and inferior), or homosexuals. Monsters are scapegoats of what society shuns. A strict Christian society with hard values and morals will have many monsters enumerating anything from sexuality to interracial marriage. When a society is well (financially speaking), and popularly conservative like it use to be, most monsters tended to be vampires; the opposite of what a society is (order, monogamy, laws, rules, morality). Vampires represent a breakdown of traditional morality and sexuality, a rejection of religion (there's a reason you can ward off a vampire with a cross), and the seduction and corruption of the innocent. Part of the whole concept of vampires is that they're not just sexy as hell, but aren't too picky about which warm hole they decide to probe. Zombies, popular during times of societal and economic turbulence, represent anything that threatens the survival of civilization, whether it be viruses or consumerism; it depicts the fall of civilization to that of mindless walking corpses that consume and assimilate everything in their way.

Monsters also represent repressed desires. Monsters are free and oppose all the laws that society imposes. The monster's very existence is a refusal of boundaries. Sometimes we love monsters. We WANT to be the monster. And while speaking of boundaries it is imperative to note that monsters have always existed outside boundaries to ward off curiosity and exploration as well. Monsters were always charted and depicted in drawings of maps where land and sea was uncharted and unexplored- warning off others through fear of death or worse. One risked attack by monsters guarding borders. Monsters are a tool to limit society and, in a way, controlling it. Monsters punish people for not following society.

It is easy to see what people in a certain society or time tough and feared. It is reflected by the monsters they create; by the “children” they gave birth to.

So why does difference (ergo, monsters) equal fear? Cohen wrote that "Difference outside the system is terrifying because it reveals the truth of the system, its fragility, its relativity, and its morality..." Monsters show us how easy it is to break down the structured societies we've built to feel safe. In order to understand and decode a society, one look at the monsters they've created will be revealing enough.

Lorn: Acid Rain, a dance of the dead

Through the shattered window of the driver seat she's seen rising up, staggering out of the wrecked car; smoke curling where the bumper was embedded into a pole. The girl, wounded and dressed in cheerleader's uniform, is alone. She limps heavily, leaning up against the car. It is nighttime outside, the scene lit by the neon glow of an abandoned diner nearby; no one in sight. A low electronic sound plays in the background; a sinister rhythm that turns into a crunching beat. Her movements change- they move to the beat in aggressive, powerful movements. She's fighting death, battling it.

The beat stops, and she resumes a weak stagger towards a diner. It is deep nighttime, and though the sign spells "open" the diner is abandoned. Neon signs contrast the darkness outside, and the camera pans out from the cheerleader with the faltering step to reveal another girl dressed in uniform, leaning against the counter, casual and nonchalant. The other cheerleader seems to have been in the crash; she's bloodied and wounded. The beat returns, and they both stomp, dancing forcefully as the music becomes richer. Woozy vocals flow into the analogue synths. "Daylight," they say, "hang tight all you", as if urging them to keep moving until daytime. Their movements are mesmerizing and eerie, as is the music. There is an undercurrent of emotion in it that is unsettling and beautiful at the same time. The camera follows them through the dim lit halls of the diner (the bright and colorful neon in the front becoming suddenly grey and dark in the back. The exit sign and the kitchen now looks like a morgue), and more wounded cheerleaders join. Listening to the bass incites a sort of fear and anxiety, as if their hearts are ready to stop at any moment.

The constant shift between force and weakness in their movements seems to signify their struggle for life and survival. In the near end they all gather together outside the diner and perform their dance in sync, implying they've all died at that point in time. The first cheerleader stops and holds a hand tenderly against her side, and suddenly she's alone in front of an empty swimming pool staring forlornly into the camera; her eyes showing the despair of her acceptance. She's finally acknowledged her death, and the scene changes to the smoking car. This time, however, all the cheerleader's bodies lay still and lifeless within. Both the music start and end abruptly, circling back to this scene. Maybe it's some sort of endless limbo that they're in. But in the beginning there was only one cheerleader. Perhaps she was the one to die on impact; her soul the first to wander off until she was joined by those of the others as they died. They were all in a different stage of their dying journey. They seem at ease unlike her though; having already accepted their fate.

Watching Flying Lotus' video "Until the Quiet Comes" reminded me very much of Lorn's "Acid Rain", and I was quick to find out through research that Flying Lotus took Lorn in under his wing at Brainfeeder record labels, therefore they must draw some inspiration from each other. But there's something uniquely dark and brooding about Lorn's melodies; something so emotional and powerful. In an interview he was asked "Behind the beats and the music one can really tell there is a unsettling, macabre nature behind the sounds you produce, was there ever a catalyst for this?"
To this he replied "I grew up surrounded by alcohol and drug addiction, no father, tossed around between family members. I was taught I was a piece of shit by racists in Arkansas. My older brother cut my middle finger off with an ice skate, beat the shit out of me, and later threatened to shoot me in the head with his Glock." "I guess with all the loudness and brashness I use I’m trying to take up that violent space. All of that is the negative space, the fear, resentment, anger.. the real core of the music. For me at least, it is what’s left; what perseveres."

The music video reflects this mood perfectly and artistically, lending a visual to a beautiful piece of sound that is truly hypnotic, haunting and sad. It is the dance of the dead.

You Say You Want a Devolution? A Response

Kurt Andersen has raised the alarm. 'Warning! Our fashion, our cars, our economics and our politics have been yanked to a screeching halt by a culture heavy with nostalgia and fearful of the new thanks to technology and sprawling corporations!' He has a point, and he may even be right- for those who fail to see the purpose of innovation, and refuse to acknowledge the circumstances of today's cultural landscape.

"The future has arrived, and it's all about dreaming of the past." Before, people looked at the past with an air of disdain; avoided it in favor of the new.Yet today's clothing looks the same as it has since the 00's. Is this true? For the most part, it is! Looks have ceased to change in that frantic, adventurous way that he so wistfully craves. People started reviving instead of inventing. But did he ever stop to consider why that was? Sure, he argues that corporations depend on our taste for the material to remain constant. He writes that technology has allowed us to espy the radically different past and satisfy our desires for the fresh and new-sprung.  Likely, yes- to both. But he's chosen to omit that those previous dramatic changes in cultural landscape were brought on by war, civil and political unrest, practicality, and repression. Something has changed today. Women aren't mitigated by oppressive societal expectations as they used to be. They can dress with greater freedom than ever before. In fact, anyone can, regardless of practicality or political expression. Pants aren't just for men, jeans aren't just for workers, flower crowns aren't just for hippies and neon hair isn't just for emos. So fashion has become something more personal, more individual- there isn't a "look" to the general population of today that can be labeled and archived in time. They're all the same in that they're all different. It doesn't mean the end of fashion. It means that there isn't a problem to solve.

     The purpose of innovation is to solve a problem. Back then the problems were different; the fashionably distinctive hippie movement was spurred on by those who marched to end the Vietnam war. The brash vehicle design was fueled by an increase in wealthy, young people eager to impress with their fast, exotic cars. Well then, it's not surprising that Kurt finds the 21st century lacking- he's ignoring the problems that shape today's innovation, therefore looking where he won't find. Why is there a lack of stylistic bold and new? He himself pointed to the economic interest in keeping trends predictable, and what right has he to complain? The previous decades of innovation brought on the 2008 recession; all the money and more was used up, and the future generation was left to pick up and piece together the parts after the mess left by the rash, albeit fashionable, baby boomers. Our efforts to innovate have moved on from how a car looks to how gas efficient it is, how safe and how environmentally damaging it is. Perhaps looks aren't the focus of today's innovation. Yet this cultural change driven by substance over style is, as told by Kurt, " a permanent loss of appetite for innovation and the shockingly new", and "the way that Western civilization declines, not with a bang but with a long, nostalgic whimper." Quite dramatic, isn't it? While the desire for shockingly new innovation isn't where Kurt wants to find it, it exists well and alive- in technology and science, where today's problems find solving.

     He acknowledges that innovation is found there, almost regretfully. He also introduced his so-called Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History by explaining that those incredible new changes have come with that loss of culture; the end of stylistic innovation. And he's not wrong; technology did allow for the obsession with the material to change. Not because people cowered at the sight of change of clung to the familiar, but because cultural priorities shifted. Some day, and it may be sooner than he thinks, style will come to life with sensational and brand-new design. But today, it is time to see the true purpose of innovation, and approach the issues faced today with new and clever approaches; not with clothes, not with cars, not even with politics or economics, but with those new tools so powerful they've already marked a new era not just for culture, but for humanity as a whole.