I took myself to the new movie Blade Runner 2049 to see what kind
of future the Hollywood dream-shop is serving up in these days. It was an
excellent illustration of the over-investments in technology with diminishing
returns that are dragging us into collapse and of the attendant
techno-narcissism that afflicts the supposedly thinking class in this
society, who absolutely don’t get what this collapse is about. The more
computer magic Hollywood drags into the picture, the less coherent their
story-telling gets. Hollywood is collapsing, and it’s not just because of
Harvey Weinstein’s antics.
Movies of this genre are really always more about the current moment than
about the future, and Blade Runner 2049 is full of hilarious
retro-anachronisms — things around us now which will probably not be in the
future. The signature trope in many sci-fi dystopias of recent times is the
assumed ever-presence of automobiles.
The original Mad Max was little more than an extended car chase —
though apparently all that people remember about it is the desolate desert
landscape and Mel Gibson’s leather jumpsuit. As the series wore on, both the
vehicles and the staged chases became more spectacularly grandiose, until, in
the latest edition, the movie was solely about Charlize Theron driving a
truck. I always wondered where Mel got new air filters and radiator hoses,
not to mention where he gassed up. In a world that broken, of course, there
would be no supply and manufacturing chains.
So, of course, Blade Runner 2049 opens with a shot of the
detective played by Ryan Gosling in his flying car, zooming over a landscape
that looks more like a computer motherboard than actual earthly terrain. As
the movie goes on, he gets in and out of his flying car more often than a San
Fernando soccer mom on her daily rounds. That actually tells us something
more significant than all the grim monotone trappings of the production
design, namely, that we can’t imagine any kind of future — or any human
society for that matter — that is not centered on cars.
But isn’t that exactly why we’ve invested so much hope and expectation
(and public subsidies) in the activities of Elon Musk? After all, the Master
Wish in this culture of wishful thinking is the wish to be able to keep
driving to Wal Mart forever. It’s the ultimate fantasy of a shallow
“consumer” society. The people who deliver that way of life, and profit from
it, are every bit as sincerely wishful about it as the underpaid and overfed
schnooks moiling in the discount aisles. In the dark corners of so-called
postmodern mythology, there really is no human life, or human future, without
cars.
This points to the central fallacy of this Sci-fi genre: that technology
can defeat nature and still exist. This is where our techno-narcissism comes
in fast and furious. The Blade Runner movies take place in and
around a Los Angeles filled with mega-structures pulsating with holographic
advertisements. Where does the energy come from to construct all this stuff?
Supposedly from something Mr. Musk dreams up that we haven’t heard about yet.
Frankly, I don’t believe that such a miracle is in the offing.
The denizens of this 2049 Los Angeles are a rabble of ragged scavengers
bolting down bowls of ramen in the never-ending drizzle. Apparently they have
nothing to do, nothing useful or gainful, that is. So you can’t help
wondering how this hypothetical economy supports such population of
no-accounts. I mean, we do know how our current economy supports the
millions who are out of the work force, bolting their ramen between visits to
the tattoo parlor: by giveaways based on pervasive accounting fraud backed by
the now dwindling supply of oil that can be profitably extracted from the
ground. But that won’t continue much longer. Know why? Because things that
can’t go on, don’t.
One thing Blade Runner 2049 gets right in its retro-anachronistic
borrowings from the present is the awesome joylessness of the culture. The
artistry in this vision of the future is especially vivid in illuminating the
absence of real artistry in contemporary “postmodern” American life. Sleek
mechanical surfaces are everything, with no substance beneath the surface.
I walked out after two hours, and there was plenty more to go. It was too
dreary, and too intellectually insulting to endure. I don’t blame Ryan
Gosling, though. His look of doleful skepticism throughout the proceedings
was perfect.
Great Fall Reading… JHK’s new book!
“Simply the best novel about the 1960s.”
Read the first chapter here (click) on Patreon
Buy the book at Amazon or
click on the cover below
or get autographed copies from Battenkill
Books
Other Books by JHK
