In contrast to classic dystopian sci-fi like Orwell and Huxley, there’s something really dishonest about The Hunger Games franchise. That’s not saying it’s devoid of revelation, but the fact that it’s sugar coating its true intentions and the nature of armed revolution makes this an especially pernicious piece of filmmaking. Despite its surprisingly pro-life conclusion, Mockingjay Part 2 is burdened by stilted performances, dumb PC cliches, a leaden tone and an absence of any real tension or adrenaline rush.
Mockingjay Part 2 finds our heroine, Katniss Everdeen, in the midst of an armed and surprisingly well supplied District 13 insurrection against President Snow and the Capitol. Peeta Mellark is still recovering from the MK Ultra mind control program to which he was subjected. Jilted former lover, Gale Hawthorne, is bummed about Katniss’s torn affections, but remains loyal to her, the revolution and Primrose regardless. President Coin and Plutarch Heavensbee are still running psychological warfare operations and propaganda campaigns from the cushy confines of the District 13 centcom.
The power of propaganda and psychological warfare is the overriding theme of Mockingjay. By the final film, Katniss’s status as Victor Tribute morphs into Revolutionary Messiah. Katniss was exploited as goddess-like heroine through the Games, but the Resistance have simply capitalized on her cult of personality to galvanize the masses for their revolutionary goals. She defies Coin’s orders to make propaganda videos from the secure confines of District 13’s Lookout Mountain Airforce Station and takes it upon herself to personally assassinate Snow. Like their real world globalist counterparts, Coin and Heavensbee resign themselves to her decision and resolve to make her moves seem controlled by the Resistance. When she arrives at the Resistance military compound, Katniss is greeted by a mass display of cultish obeisance. Upon being recognized, everyone stops whatever they were doing and huddles around her hoisting the three fingered salute that was used throughout Panem while she was a Tribute. Once the command forces accept that she can’t be controlled by Coin, they place her with what’s essentially a high tech special forces bomb squad for the express purpose of diffusing traps and weapons in between propaganda videos. Both sides are utilizing psyops and see it as essential to demoralizing the opposition.
The Hunger Games is doing the same thing every action/sci-fi/superhero franchise is doing when it comes to presenting what was once a relatively clear delineation between good and evil. It’s trying to eke out a grey area of Greater Good in a corrupted world of perpetual violence that sees the acquisition of “democratic” power as the highest goal. While the Resistance tries to carry out its carefully laid military plans, Katniss gets to be the voice of would be moral authority by pointing out that civilians and children will be killed along with Capitol Peacekeepers. Tough shit, honey. This is war, Katniss. Of course, Katniss can claim the moral high ground cuz she’s female and she’s the Mockingjay. Or something.
Of course, once they undertake their mission, they don’t hesitate to use deadly force. The film gets to sidestep this moral conundrum by making their enemies Peacekeepers or mutants. The Peacekeepers are just faceless goons in military regalia and the mutants are anonymous monsters whose existence is never explained to my knowledge. Perhaps they’re just the Capitol’s genetically engineered super soldiers.
The film is also showing the rank duplicity of the Left’s relationship to authority and hierarchy. In yet another resemblance to their real world globalist analogues, the District 13 shadow government is highly resourced and safely secluded while the rubes who fight in the trenches are kept compliant with propaganda videos and braindead promises of democracy. They exploit Katniss’s image by presenting her as mythical, quasi-divine icon just like every other pop culture heroine. The entire Resistance is no less hierarchical or authoritarian than the Capitol. They display total deference to Coin’s leadership and military command structures. Katniss is, however, the notable exception. Her journey began as an act of selflessness to protect Primrose, but her entire character arc since then has been defined by defiance. Herein lies the absurdity. Progressives have built an entire philosophy that’s designed around a posture of rebellion wrapped in flowery rhetoric while simultaneously seeking total domination and control. The film wants to have it both ways by showing that Katniss’s acts of defiance bring about #EQUALITY and #SocialJustice while ignoring that everyone else is required to fall in line.
It also sidesteps the bloodlust and hatred that had been stoked amongst the proles by both the Capitol and most especially the Resistance. Though Suzanne Collins really wants you to think that her story wasn’t just a retread of Animal Farm, it ends up being that anyway. By taking out Coin, Collins undoubtedly wanted to show that Katniss knew that she was just as corrupt as Snow. By removing him, she’d presumably forestalled a new dictatorship to replace the old. But assassinating Coin only unleashed the desire to exact bloody revenge on Snow. The proles essentially tore him to pieces. You can’t unleash that kind of revolutionary bloodlust and expect to control it. The Resistance would have had to resort to the same iron fisted military force that their deposed enemies did. The idea that everything just worked out peacefully after Snow’s death is ludicrous.
One theme that seemed curiously absent was the actual presence of food and hunger. Hunger was a more prominent theme in the first film, but by the final film, it seems to have diminished in significance. The first film did a good job of showing how food deprivation was used as a control mechanism and the excess of the Capitol was seen as decadence. If anything, the only hunger was a desire for vengeance. The one time there is an overt reference to food is when the remaining Capitol civilians are being herded to safety after the Resistance forces had infiltrated the city walls. The citizens walk in a zombified trance as the promise of medicine and food is looped over the PA.
The Hunger Games is a sad commentary on the world of perpetual revolution and panopticism that all of the post-Boomer generations have inherited. The very act of revolution becomes the final Hunger Game. Even in their final attempt to depose the despotic Snow, they submit completely to the very media driven bloodsports that were used to keep the population under control. The spectre of totalitarianism and dystopia in cinema isn’t presented as a warning anymore. At this point, it’s just telling you what’s coming. Siberia already has their own real life version of The Hunger Games in production. That’s ultimately what the entire social media experiment seems geared towards producing. It’s merely a giant psyop that’s designed to engender hostility and pit people against one another. It appears to be succeeding.
With the possible exception of Donald Sutherland’s President Snow and Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch Abernathy, the remaining cast and characters are forgettable and devoid of charm. Jena Malone’s portrait of shaved head smack addict, Johanna Mason, struck me as the archetype on which Emma Gonzalez was based when the CIA and FBI were seeking poster children for the Marjory Stoneman gun confiscation movement. Once again, the filmmakers are at pains to present the Resistance as colorblind, multicultural gender egalitarians where women don’t just occupy military and government leadership roles, but they’re completely proficient with firearms and combat. It’s so boring, stupid, and unrealistic, but anyone who isn’t drinking Hollywood SJW Koolaid already knows it at this point.
Like many others, I was smitten by Jennifer Lawrence’s gritty turn in Winter’s Bone. I liked Katniss at the beginning of the series, but just as I’ve grown weary of Lawrence’s hollow preening in real life, the character and the performance became increasingly intolerable. It seemed like a mirror image of her J Law persona. In other words, someone who was once probably really down to earth and likable but has put herself in a position in which she has to play her own version of Mockingjay: Young, Powerful Hollywood Womyn. To my great astonishment, Katniss ends up marrying Peeta and becoming a mother. It’s such a rarity to see that in film these days, and it feels weird to praise the film for portraying something that used to be quite normal and commonplace. Given Hollywood’s pathological obsession with feminism and the entire array of items on the SJW agenda checklist, heterosexual romance and marriage takes a backseat. But Katniss and Peeta both played the role of being media puppets in the service of globalist shadow government. Perhaps the film is telling us that the life of domestic bliss is only reserved for the elite. For the rest of you….may the odds be ever in your favor.
Dystopian sci-fi has enjoyed a popular resurgence in film in recent years. Whether it’s youth oriented, big ticket franchises like The Hunger Games and Divergent or more highbrow offerings like Blade Runner 2049 and Ghost in the Shell, it’s increasingly difficult to discern whether Hollywood wants to warn us or simply prepare us for a dystopian technocracy of one form or another. Though dystopian science fiction has been a staple of literary sci-fi for a long time, cinematic portraits have a shorter history. Certainly among the first and, for my money, unquestionably the best vision of the Orwellian technocratic dystopia is George Lucas’ first feature length film, THX 1138. Made with the modest budget of $777,777, THX 1138 is an unremittingly grim visual and technical marvel which portrays a society that micromanages and monitors every facet of human behavior. The fact that it is so nightmarishly vivid about its forecasts of a technocratic police state makes you wonder about whether or not the occult numerological significance of the budget may have actually embued it with its oppressive malevolence.
THX 1138 opens with a Buck Rogers clip of Tragedy on Saturn, Chapter Two from April 18, 1939. Besides being a subtle homage to the films of his youth, its sunny optimism over the glorious future of scientific progress creates an immediate contrast to the dreary and oppressive portrait that awaits the viewer. Embedded within the introduction, Lucas is also setting up the theme of THX as a “ordinary, normal human being who keeps his wits about him”. Is the title of the episode yet another subtle Crowley reference to the Nazi crackdown on the Brotherhood of Saturn? Or is the film itself a subtle allusion to the Buck Rogers episode which foreshadows THX’ purging of his profane and egoic selfhood through his union with the Mary-Isis-Sophia avatar and crossing the abyss of the demiurgical Saturnian Matrix to attain his Promethean gnosis? It may be a reach, but given the very specific numerological significance of the budget, I’m not ruling it out.
The film is unspecific about the year in which it’s set, but it is presumed to be the early 21st century. Like Orwell and Huxley, the accuracy with which it predicts the future to which we seem headed makes you wonder whether he was offering a warning or simply telegraphing intention of a larger agenda. People have been stripped of actual names and have been assigned names that resemble UPC barcodes. Human emotions have been suppressed through a strict regime of pharmacological treatments. Sex and love have been outlawed. Subsequently, drab unisex white uniforms and shaven heads ensure that no one will stand apart nor any gender distinction be recognized. In other words, a world of perfect #EQUALITY. There is no organic life whatsoever. The entire film is a series of colorless, antiseptic interiors which resemble a laboratory or a shopping mall. Presaging the sensory overload of Ridley Scott’s future metropolis by a decade, THX 1138 is arguably the cinematic archetype for every cyberpunk dystopia since then. People are awash in a bath of electronic stimulation and automated messaging. The line between advertising and state propaganda has all but disappeared.
As the titular character, Robert Duvall is an operator on an assembly line who uses mechanical arms to insert radioactive fuel cells into robots. Anticipating both Blade Runner 2049 and Robocop, the entire police force of THX 1138 are androids. Since all organic forms of social organization and restraint have been completely obliterated, humans essentially serve the purpose of manufacturing the machines which are programmed to police their own behavior. Extend this speculation a little further to fully sentient AI, and you have the foundation for the entire Matrix and Terminator franchises.
As we’re introduced to THX, a horrific explosion takes place in an adjoining facility resulting in many injuries. A brief shot of a mutilated corpse being dragged out of a contaminated area on a surveillance camera suggests tight control of any and all information that pertains to public safety or raises any possibility of emotional distress. A velvety smooth PA announcement immediately tries to put a spin of positivity on a deadly and toxic industrial accident by comparing the quantity of losses between sectors. It’s very black humor, but it’s a chilling commentary on the depth of society’s emotional anaesthesia.
Male voice: That accident over in Red Sector L destroyed another 63 personnel, giving them a total of 242 lost to our 195. Keep up the good work and prevent accidents. This shift is concluded.
Paired strictly on the basis of sanitation ratings, THX 1138 shares a flat with LUH 3417. Living an emotionally arid existence with another human with whom she has no connection drives her to commit one of the highest crimes in society. She begins to steadily reduce the dosage of drugs required by law which has the unexpected side effect of restoring natural emotional responses in THX. After receiving sexual gratification from a mechanical device, THX switches from the African exotica porn hologram network to the violence network. Anticipating the VR trend by several decades, THX zones out to hologram of a robocop mercilessly beating the pulp out of some poor soul with a nightstick. You see very little of the actual violence, but you don’t need to because the sound effect alone creates its own psychic trauma.
In order to unburden himself from the unexpected side effect of his restored capacity for feeling, THX goes to the proto-AI confessional. Anticipating Anthony Levandowski’s transhumanist church by several decades, OMM 0000 manifests as a screenshot of Hans Memling’s Christ Blessing, but is later revealed to be a Wizard of Oz style illusion. Similar to the Wizard of Oz, I suspect Lucas wanted to simultaneously portray religion as the Noble Lie as well as a hollowed out, postmodern One World Religion demiurge. It even has the vocal inflections and cadences necessary to convey absolute interest, concern and compassion.
OMM: My time – is yours. Go ahead.
THX 1138: What’s wrong with me? What am I to her, she to me? Nothing!
OMM: Yes, fine.
THX 1138: Just an ordinary roommate. I share rooms with her. Our relationship is normal. Conforming.
OMM: Excellent!
THX 1138: We share nothing – but space. What is she doing to me?
OMM: Yes, I understand.
Taking the #MeToo movement to its fullest conclusion, heterosexual intercourse has been outlawed. When THX and LUH finally have sex, it is filled with menace and dread. THX tries to assuage LUH’s fears that they’re being watched, but Lucas cuts to a control room of surveillance monitors transfixed on the crime being perpetrated. It is a pitch perfect foreshadowing of the social media star chamber and the myriad ways our open embrace of technology has given the surveillance state every weapon they could ever need.
LUH convinces THX that they can escape the city and run away together. They arrange to meet after LUH finishes her work shift, but she appears at THX’ sector to inform him that she’s been reassigned to a new shift and new living quarters by her superior, SEN 5241. Played by Donald Pleasance, SEN is a schizophrenic collision of nervous conformity, clenched authority and creepy obsequiousness. Unbeknownst to either THX and LUH, SEN had been monitoring their transgressions all along. Traumatized by LUH’s sudden disappearance from his world, THX nearly causes another industrial accident by dropping a nuclear fuel rod. He is placed on a mind lock and detained for criminal drug evasion.
While under detention, THX is subjected to a beating that is one of the most horrific scenes ever committed to film. The police subdue THX with cattleprod-like nightsticks which are able to inflict neurological and psychic damage without ever making physical contact.
He is pronounced guilty for drug evasion and sexual perversion and sentenced to a program of reconditioning. After being mind locked and tortured by psionic nightsticks, a couple of indifferent re-education technicians bicker amongst themselves while being completely oblivious to effects their knob twiddling is having on THX’ nervous system. What Lucas is presenting is the extent to which the technocratic overlords have constructed vast systems of management which allow them to control the minds and nervous systems of the citizens through voluntary and involuntary methods.
As THX escapes, we are introduced to other ideas that are found in numerous subsequent dystopian sci-fi films. SRT is a bored AI hologram who forms an alliance with THX. The very notion of an AI which elicits sympathy from the viewer is now a standard feature of any sci-fi film with transhumanist themes. There are also hints of both organ harvesting and laboratory grown fetuses. State controlled, scientifically managed birth rates, eugenics, genetic engineering and industrial food production gone wrong would be famously examined in Logan’s Run, Gattaca and Soylent Green among many others.
Fans of Star Wars will likely appreciate the seeds of its visual world building and sound design contained in THX 1138. Lucas’ prodigious skill was evident right out of the gate. Not only did Lucas continue to reference this film throughout the Star Wars series, THX 1138 contains the first cinematic reference to a wookiee.
After a breathtaking car and motorcycle chase, the film culminates with THX escaping the confines of the city by climbing upward through a ventilation tunnel of some kind while being chased by a robocop. The robocop eventually receives instruction to abandon the chase because it would exceed the budget allotted. All decision-making has been fully optimized around efficient usage of resources. It seems insignificant on the surface, but this final scene also has esoteric symbolic significance when seen through the lens of qabalistic mysticism. THX crossed the abyss of Da’at on the Tree of Life, and passed through his spiritual nigredo to rise phoenix-like to the surface of the world with Knowledge.
Then there’s the entire question of the hidden numerological meanings embedded in the names of the characters. Both THX 1138 and LUH 3417 add up to 29 and 2+9=11. 11 has alchemical significance in that it represents the twin pillars of Solomon’s Temple, Boaz and Jachin. These pillars signify the reconciliation of opposites into an invisible third pillar. Besides being another subtle Crowley reference, OMM converts to 14 and 14 = 7+7. If you think I’m reaching, consider the dollar amount of the budget. I don’t think there’s anything that didn’t serve a very specific purpose.
Even if Lucas was using this to transmit occult symbolism and esoteric messages, it still seems to be a film which portrays a man breaking free of the conditioning and liberating himself. That alone sets it apart from the current messaging of Blade Runner 2049 or the latest cyberpunk dystopia, Ready Player One.
Though A Clockwork Orange is a very close second, I believe THX 1138 is the quintessential sci-fi dystopian film. Not only does it contain the seeds of every dystopian sci-fi film since its creation, it foreshadows the world in which we currently live. I’d like to think that Lucas wanted to warn people of the dangers of the technological age with this film. But even if he didn’t have that goal, that’s exactly the lesson you should take from it.
When I heard that a Blade Runner sequel was being made, I was skeptical but curious. Sure, it seemed like lazy Hollywood opportunism, but given Ridley Scott’s involvement I was willing to give it a shot. The 1982 original was a classic in its own right. It didn’t need a sequel, but the potential for a worthy follow-up story certainly existed. Of course, the potential for yet another catastrophic and unnecessary goatfuck of a beloved film legacy was equally possible. I found Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival thought provoking and Hampton Fancher’s slot on the writing team certainly added to its possible appeal. In short, I was mildly optimistic about Blade Runner 2049.
Thankfully, my optimism was rewarded. While there is a lot of commentary that makes me squeamish, Blade Runner 2049 is one of the most successful sequels to a sci-fi classic ever attempted. This is a brilliant piece of contemporary cinema that’s well written, lovingly made, carefully paced, and packed with symbolism and metadata. It is also a bleak and deeply despairing vision of the future. For a film largely built around the quest for humanity in a world marked by declining birth rates, politicized debates over climate change, mass immigration, gender roles, race relations and the ever increasing influence of the technocratic elite, Blade Runner 2049 feels less like speculation and more like a subtle form of conditioning. This is a film that is desperately grasping for some glimpse of human connection, meaning and purpose, but it concedes that ecological catastrophe, hyper urbanization, a multicultural social order, and a gargantuan cyberpunk police state are foregone conclusions. It is basically encouraging you to embrace your technocratic overlords. The remnants of your desiccated souls can be reclaimed if you accept the inevitable, proles. The hope for release from the existential ennui that accompanied your eager embrace of a world unconstrained by spiritual delusions can be found in the brave new world of AI enabled hyperreality. The glorious dreams of the modern age with its promises of unbounded scientific progress awaits you by allowing it to reach its apotheosis. Even if it does mean you’ll be living in overcrowded urban squalor oversaturated with artificial stimuli and eating industrial farmed maggots. You too will find redemption by seeking salvation in merger of man and machine.
Aside from its noir tone and cutting-edge visuals, the first Blade Runner film was provocative because it was among the first major films which explored the ramifications of a world where robots and artificial intelligence had been achieved. That world is no longer sci-fi speculation. It’s here. It’s now. Jared Leto’s megalomaniacal replicant mogul, Niander Wallace, is blind but can function through the aid of cybernetic implants and a swarm of optical drones. Ray Kurzweil and his AI acolytes actively champion the advent of a so-called technological singularity and genuinely believe that a merger with digital consciousness is mankind’s future. Given this present day reality, one cannot necessarily view Blade Runner 2049 with the kind of detachment we reserve for big budget Hollywood entertainment. Films and shows like Altered Carbon, Ghost in the Shell, Westworld and Mr. Robot explore these same themes and continue to proliferate. It’s increasingly apparent that this collection of themes carries the distinct aura of an agenda. As paranoid and conspiratorial as it may seem, this film is very likely telegraphing the intentions of the Technorati.
Blade Runner 2049 is also a quintessentially postmodern piece of science fiction cinema. The film is a rich and masterful pastiche of discordant dualisms, inverted archetypes, hypertextual imagery, and visual remixes of its predecessor film. This is a film that subverts every notion you hold about what is real, true or right. Echoes of Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, THX 1138, Ghost in the Shell, Total Recall, Robocop, The Terminator, Westworld, The Matrix and other related cinematic forebears are also deeply embedded in its programming. There is more than a little standard progressive commentary around racial justice, police brutality, immigration, miscegenation, corporatism, gender politics and most importantly, the increasing prevalence of AI in our lives. It just takes a little more effort to decode than your standard issue pablum.
The world of Blade Runner 2049 is dying, infertile and bereft of hope for the future. The ecosystem has collapsed and the population has been herded into megacities. Tech mogul Niander Wallace brought civilization back from the brink by developing synthetic agriculture. Prior to the collapse, the world lived off of the slave labor of Nexus 6 replicants manufactured by the Tyrell Corporation. After a series of rebellions, the Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt and Wallace acquired the remaining assets in order to make a new line of Nexus 9 replicants that were perfectly obedient. The remaining Nexus 6 models are hunted by the generation 9 Blade Runners. In contrast to the Nexus 6 line, the Nexus 9 models have implanted memories.
From a pure visual perspective, there is no natural beauty to be found, and the times you are given a vision of organic life, it’s a tiny flower or a hologram. All the scenes that take place outside the urban sprawl are a blasted out, desolate ruin. The scenes of the city envelop you in their cavernous expanse of brutalist futurism, but it is a feeling of foreboding wrought by millions of lives in abject isolation. The lynchpin of the film and the lone symbol of hope for the future lies in the impossible birth of a child born from the womb of a replicant.
As the film opens, Ryan Gosling’s Officer K is en route to an industrial protein farming facility to investigate a possible rogue Nexus 8 replicant. His spinner is flying completely remotely without any active piloting and he awakens to an electronic prompt indicating his impending arrival. Since K is a symbol of law, order and obedience, his slumber suggests both the extent to which we’ve ceded autonomy to machines as well as an unconsciousness to his own humanity. A mindless minion destroying his own kind at the bidding of his human slave masters. As self-driving cars and other vehicles become more commonplace, a flying car self-piloting a man to a distant location completely unharmed conveys a message of absolute confidence in the future of AI enabled automobility and aviation. Self-driving cars are fine, proles. Stop worrying. Allowing people to drive their own vehicles is too much individual liberty.
The encounter with Sapper Morton can be read as an inversion of the entire narrative on racial justice. Officer K was designed as a perfectly obedient slave programmed to kill rogue replicants with impunity. Sapper Morton is a lone Nexus 8 model living a perfectly productive life harvesting grubs, yet his will to be independent makes him a mark. Just as blacks were the underclass after being liberated from slavery, they remained collectively pathologized even if they were perfectly law abiding. Morton even curses him for killing “his own kind”. After a punishing brawl, K subdues Morton sufficiently in order to administer some kind of electronic scan over his right eye. Call me paranoid, but given that microchip implants are a present day reality, one can’t help but wonder if this too is the shape of things to come. Right before K murders him, Morton says he’ll never become human because he hasn’t witnessed the “miracle” he has. K is utterly indifferent to his claim and takes his life just as he was assigned to do. This allusion to miracles is not only a reference to the spiritual void in K’s existence, but more broadly, to all of Western civilization. The world of Blade Runner is our own fatalistically extrapolated to its fullest conclusion. Society has lost sight of any vision of the divine, any connection to the preciousness of life, or any ideals to conserve. Let alone the will to continue the propagation of its own species.
Right before K leaves the scene, his drone spots an object buried beneath a dead tree. Trees usually symbolize harmonious relationships between man and woman or heaven and earth, but this is one of many notes of symbolic dissonance in a film filled with disjunction. What K unearths is the remains of a replicant woman whose mysterious death sets in motion a quest for his own identity and purpose.
Upon returning to headquarters, K is subjected to an inquisitorial “baseline” diagnostic test. The test itself requires K to recite fragments and words from a passage of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. It’s a passage that alludes to the existence of an afterlife, but the clinical, mechanized, and almost hostile tone robs what is otherwise a beautiful piece of poetry of its effect. With its references to interlinked cells, what it does represent is the lattice work of forces within the film all seeking to resolve the various discordances of this broken, poisoned world of despair, isolation and technological artifice.
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And, dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
The whole scene also struck me as a reversal of the final interrogation scene in Logan’s Run. Instead of a mechanized technocracy seeking to extract a sacred truth from a human who had broken the conditioning, here you have the reverse. A human using a piece of poetry which hints at transcendence in order to test the stability of a replicant’s programmed obedience while foreshadowing his eventual quest for a miracle.
After he passes the test, he returns to his apartment in a rather squalid part of the city which is quite likely representative of most neighborhoods in the metropolis. The theme of racial prejudice is reinforced as a random person hurls the epithet “Skin job” at K. Upon his arrival home, we meet his holographic girlfriend, Joi, as played by the very charming and fetching Ana de Armas. When she appears, she is decked out in an iconic 50’s era house dress with perfectly coiffed hair, perfectly applied makeup and is beaming with happiness and gratitude at the sight of her man. Obviously, in this future, not only has gender traditionalism been relegated to holographic simulation, it’s so deeply buried in the past, it’s an app that’s used to keep the replicants happy. Even his meal of grey, synthetic sludge is covered over with a hologram of a hearty, home cooked meal. The relationship between Joi and K is genuinely sweet and the fact that Hollywood can only portray earnest heterosexual romance between a hologram and a replicant is indeed one of the bleakest visions of humanity imaginable. This feels especially bitter in light of the fact that among the many reasons that the Men’s Rights Movement or the MGTOW movement in particular exist at all is because Joi represents the companionship that so many men actually seek.
As K’s superior, Lieutenant Joshi, Robin Wright can be read as an archetypal conservative, a feminist power fantasy, an ethno-nationalist and, if you’re feeling especially partisan, a proxy for Trump. Infinitely more believable than Laura Dern’s laughable and contemptible turn as Admiral Gender Studies in The Last Jedi, this is yet another portrait of a female occupying a role traditionally held by men. Though Wright carries off the role with the requisite level of icy bitchiness, Joshi leans heavily toward the feminist power fantasy archetype because there are almost no cinematic portraits of women attempting to climb the competence hierarchies of society. Nearly every cinematic vision of female power, including Joshi, asks you to assume that her ascendancy to that role began at the bottom, and that her attainment of the position came from organic competition with men. No affirmative action here, you dirty misogynistic bigots. The film, along with nearly every other major Hollywood offering, simply expects you to submit to the fact that the dystopian cyberpunk police state future is female. Not a huge leap of imagination for some of us. The one mitigating factor is that her main subordinate is a replicant. K is like the numerous males who’ve been hollowed out and emasculated by feminism. Taught to be ashamed of manhood. Expected to supplicate and genuflect at every turn. Desperately seeking true female companionship and intimacy. Craving meaning, purpose, nobility, belonging and virtue. Yet relegated to the status of mindless drone.
Villeneuve turns the archetype on its head by making her a staunch law and order conservative and crypto ethno-nationalist who wants to keep the line between replicant and human clearly delineated. When she discovers the existence of the replicant-human hybrid, she absolutely flips her shit and orders it destroyed. This adds another layer of dissonance to the character by casting a female as a destroyer of life instead of a creator.
Lieutenant Joshi: The World is built in a wall that separates kind. Tell either side there’s no wall, you’ve bought a war. Or a slaughter.
Naturally, Joshi is played mostly as a cold and implacable authoritarian cunt whose views brook no sympathy. Regardless, her character provides a critical opposing force competing for dominance within this futuristic hellscape. Unfortunately, this is also one of places where the film slides into the progressive cesspool. Joshi embodies both law and order conservatism and ethno-nationalism. In the conservative universe, hierarchies of authority are natural and legitimate, and must be occupied by people who are both competent and virtuous. Conversely, submission to authority is equally legitimate because order, and by extension, the preservation of moral virtue, are the highest goals for society. And in Joshi’s case, the preservation of a clear line between human and replicant. K is both a law enforcement official and a slave. Dispossessed of his past and forced to kill his own species because he is programmed for perfect obedience. When Joshi orders the mixed race replicant-human hybrid destroyed, Joshi immediately questions his willingness to obey. K responds by saying that he was unaware that disobedience was even an option.
In the liberal progressive worldview, disobedience to any conservative norm, real or perceived, is completely legitimate. If anything, the entire progressive worldview is little more than a never-ending war against the prevailing order and a blind pursuit of some abstract notion of equality. Because progressives have moved the goalposts of morality for centuries, Villeneuve and company are essentially presenting even the preservation of biologically pure humanity as some kind of evil notion. What a horrible fascist bitch, that Lieutenant Joshi. Imagine wanting to preserve the purity of HUMANS. The film quite obviously wants you to see her as monstrous and regressive. Get ready to kneel before your AI god, proles. Your rebirth will make you even more than you were before.
Rounding out the dramatis personae is Jared Leto’s pathologically power hungry heir to Tyrell legacy, Niander Wallace. Niander is an avatar for Nimrod, and inhabits the Tower of Babel formerly occupied by Tyrell. His character has committed the ultimate rebellion against God by seeking to become God. He is blind, but can see with the aid of a swarm of optical drones. Subsequently, he doesn’t see the world with natural sight. Only through a vision of technological perfection which, for him, means a civilization of perfectly obedient replicants. The only thing preventing him from achieving complete dominion is his inability to crack Tyrell’s secret for replicant procreation. Once he learns of the existence of the replicant-human hybrid, he sets his cybernetically enhanced sights on ensuring that he acquires the child before Joshi and K destroy it.
K’s first step in unraveling the mystery of the replicant remains takes him back to the Wallace Corporation archives to mine what remains of the Tyrell records. Wallace’s replicant assistant, Luv, cautions him that the records that survived the Blackout of 2022 are scant. This small reference to a digital cataclysm which took out most of civilization’s records is kind of chilling all by itself. Through the centuries, humans built culture, developed language, and preserved history through physical records and objects. The digital age has certainly given us greater access to information and services, but it makes you think about what we’ve lost in the process. If memory and history can evaporate so easily into the digital ether, are we, in fact, allowing our deepest essence to be stripmined by technocrats? Is the blackout of 2022 a foreshadowing of a cataclysm to come? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Luv retrieves a small recording of Rick Deckard’s first encounter with Rachael. This leads him back to Sapper Morton’s maggot farm where he discovers a baby sock, a photo of Rachael with her child, and a date carved into the base of the tree. The latter discovery shakes him to his core. Upon returning to headquarters, Joshi asks him to recall his fondest childhood memory. Like its predecessor and virtually every other sci-fi film which explores the nature of humanity in cyborgs and AI, the role of memory is the defining quality on which the drama is built. Our very sense of selfhood is rooted in a phenomena that’s barely understood. A steady accumulation of ephemeral moments that carve deep grooves of meaning into our very existence. A story. For better and worse.
Haunted by the discovery of the date, K starts combing through birth records in search of clues. He discovers the birth records of both a boy and a girl who share the exact same DNA. It’s nearly impossible to find a major Hollywood film which doesn’t blatantly pander to the identity politics, and this is one of the most base and pernicious sops to the SJW crowd. Despite the fact that K assumes that the female record was a fake, the movie very subtly insinuates that even our highly refined knowledge of genetics can’t quite explain the mystery of gender. Science is just an oppressive patriarchal construct, you transphobic bigots. While seeking the records of the dead girl in a child labor camp amongst the ruins of San Diego, K discovers a room with a furnace that maps exactly to his own memories. Thunderstruck by the prospect that his memories are real, he shares this revelation with Joi. She is delighted by the news because it suggests that K was actually born with a soul. It’s a beautiful sentiment and de Armas fills every word with pure feminine passion, but you are also keenly aware that it is merely the siren song of a digital succubus.
Joi: I always knew you were special. Maybe this is how. A child. Of woman born. Pushed into the world. Wanted. Loved.
At Joi’s behest, K seeks out a memory specialist to gain confirmation of his memories. This leads him to Dr. Ana Stelline, a Wallace subcontractor who manufactures memories for replicants. Here we have a theme that’s been repeated over and over in sci-fi films for decades. If manufacturing memory grants replicants humanity, then what effect might the manipulation of memory have on humans? The studies of the effects of social media on children is already coming in and there’s certainly a case to be made that not only is it shortening attention spans, but having adverse effects on mental health. More importantly, if people are increasingly reliant on internet connectivity for the acquisition of information, and the portal through which reality is perceived is through tech giants, what effect might this have on cultural consensus? Since AI itself was a far fetched notion a few decades back, is it unreasonable to assert that the tech overlords are very much in the business of manufacturing memory and that we’ve willingly submitted to the digital temptations which facilitate this very outcome? If a cataclysmic digital blackout which destroyed the digital past was the event which crippled civilization so badly that it enabled a technocratic cyberpunk dictatorship, can we really read this film as just another Hollywood entertainment spectacle? A certain quote from George Orwell’s 1984 comes to mind.
This eventually leads K to the ruins of Las Vegas in his quest for Deckard and presumably, the secrets of his own past. Just as we saw with Rian Johnson’s molestation of the legacy of Luke Skywalker, we find Deckard living a life of pure isolation. Taking up residence in one of the relatively intact Las Vegas hotels, Deckard embodies both manhood and fatherhood lost amongst the ruins of decadence and ephemeral pleasures. Forced to relinquish fatherhood in hopes of allowing his child a shot at life free from the fear of being hunted by Blade Runners, Deckard entrusted their care to a sort of underground replicant railroad. There is nothing but brokenness and dissolution in this world. It wants you to accept that loyalty and the bonds of familial cohesion are nothing you should expect.
Rick Deckard: Sometimes to love someone, you got to be a stranger.
Reminding us once again that the walls of our cyberpunk panopticon have been constructed by our own technological addictions, Luv and the Wallace goon squad are able to track K through the mobile device that runs the Joi hologram app. After nearly getting blown to smithereens, Luv and her goon squad put a serious beating on K. Showing us once again that this film is solidly committed to perverting every ideal, Luv the Replicant destroys K’s actual holographic love by smashing the mobile device that enables her projected image. What an absolutely evil bitch.
It wouldn’t be a Hollywood movie if there weren’t some kind of #RESISTANCE movement, and Blade Runner 2049 is no exception. After being badly wounded by Luv and Wallace’s goons, K is treated by the Replicant Liberation Front who’ve been tracking his movements all along. Freysa and her replicant revolutionaries believe that the replicant-human child is their their Messiah, and they want K to join them in their final revolution against the yoke of human tyranny. If humans could see that replicants could procreate, they’d be compelled to grant them the same liberties as humans. Aside from the obvious parallels to the various pro-immigration interests in the US and EU, this encounter draws another bright line of distinction between the progressive and conservative worldview. Since the dawn of modern age, the pillars of society that once provided the guideposts of cultural prescription have long since been eroded. Though the Western tradition makes accommodation for individual liberty, the levees of conservatism have been unable to ward off the tidal wave of modernity and the radical individualism of the progressive Left. A spiritual void needs to be filled, and in the mind of the progressive, that means a never-ending rebellion against order itself. Instead of the eternal God of Judeo-Christian faith, there is an earthly god of #EQUALITY and the perpetual pursuit of universal rights to be bestowed to an ever expanding underclass. For the progressive, the quiet, modest virtues of personal responsibility, family, and community must be supplanted by a revolutionary cause against an omnipresent oppression.
Freysa: Dying for the right cause. It’s the most human thing we can do.
Deckard is brought before Wallace who is intent on extracting the location of his hybrid child. Deckard resists, so Wallace uses an even more powerful enticement: a perfect replica of Rachael. Deckard refuses because he knows it’s a fake. Again, the film blurs the line between reality and illusion by having Deckard reject the Rachael copy simply because the color of her eyes was wrong. His experience of love was real to him, but Rachael was a replicant in the first place. Wallace condemns him to a torture facility and sends him off with Luv and some goons. After a final reunion with a giant hologram of Joi which crushes every last byte of their virtual love affair, K is faced with an existential choice. Aid the Great Replicant Proletarian Revolution by killing Deckard or kill the replicant-human hybrid to prevent Wallace from completing his dominion. A final confrontation occurs in Luv’s downed spinner on the ocean’s edge between K and Luv. It culminates with K vanquishing Luv and then rescuing Deckard from drowning in a quasi-baptism scene. K fulfills his own destiny by reuniting Deckard with Stelline. On the surface, it feels like a pretty huge symbolic moment because he forswears communist revolution and ethno-nationalism and chooses simply to reunite a father with his daughter. But if Stelline is the future, then the new Messiah is a manufacturer of memories for replicants. The holographic future of manufactured memory is female, proles.
Fantastic.
It’s not my realm of expertise, but there is undoubtedly deeper significance to the recurrence of eye imagery, water, the blue/orange dualism and the various numbers found throughout the film. Nothing is left to chance in films this big, and I find it hard to believe that there is no symbolism behind these choices. There were two things that caught my attention though. The first was the Cyrillic script on Sapper Morton’s farm facilities. On the one hand, you could chalk it up to the fact that the world of Blade Runner is just a multicultural remix of its former self. Where once there were distinct nation states with distinct cultures, here every nation coexists within a completely artificial simulacrum of itself refracted through the lens of corporatism. On the other, Sapper Morton was part of the Replicant Liberation Front. Is this a subtle inversion of the Virgin Lands Campaign under Khrushchev? I’m going with YES. Later in the film, there is an advertisement for the Soviet Union complete with hammer and sickle icons and everything. Perhaps it’s sci-fi alternative history, but by placing it in the advertising endorphin drip, it anesthetizes it and makes it no different from ads for holographic sex, food or leisure. See, proles? Communism is as safe as milk. Don’t listen to those socialism-phobic right-wing bigots. What do they know anyway, amirite?
The soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch is also a thing of dark beauty. Where Vangelis’ original was a dream of wires, moments of celestial beauty peered through console. In contrast, the Zimmer/Wallfisch soundtrack is something akin to the child laborers picking out the rare minerals of the motherboards of its predecessor. It’s yawning vistas of synthesized melancholy punctuated by rhythmic clusters of cybernetic paranoia covered by storm clouds of digitized menace. The reprise of “Tears in the Rain” at the end is a nice touch and a fitting reminder that not only did Vangelis allow a little more light in his vision, but it was sensual and tender. They break the pall of gloom ever so slightly by including choice tracks by Elvis and Frank Sinatra. The pop anthem by Lauren Daigle at the end is the only real disappointment. The fact that she’s a Christian singer strikes me as a very interesting choice given the distinctly despairing and secular nihilism of this film. I wonder if it’s also some kind of postmodern joke.
As much as the commentary in Blade Runner 2049 makes me queasy, it’s difficult for me to hate on it because it’s so beautifully made and it’s a cool story. Like so many other people, Blade Runner was a touchstone of my youth and films like it are so deeply woven into my own story. And perhaps that’s been the point all along. I’ve been watching dystopian sci-fi movies for years and like the works of Orwell, Bradbury and Huxley, I always saw them as warnings to humanity. They were stories of biblical scale that served as a permanent injunction to the human race. Hold on to your humanity at all costs, and always remember that there are good things to defend and preserve. Part of me wants to think that underneath the crushing despair, this is the message of Blade Runner 2049. Part of me wants to think that this belongs to the venerable tradition of the great dystopian works of yore in that it’s a movie that wants you to free your mind and break the system. The calling card of all great dystopian sci-fi was the struggle of man against the machine of the State. Logan 5 was a hero because he broke the conditioning of his technocratic overlords and returned to society to expose the lies and break the system. Today, the Logan 5’s of the world are people like James Damore and Jordan Peterson. In this film, they’re asking you to empathize with the machines. Not only that, they want you to become the machines. It’s the replicants who are desperately seeking humanity because there isn’t any to be found in the actual humans. They’ve taken all of the packaging of individualist rebellion that was once the province of human agency, and handed it off to the replicants. As good as Blade Runner 2049 is, I’m not entirely convinced it’s a movie that wants you to keep your humanity.
A little over a year ago, I wrote a piece in response to David Runciman’s review of Yuval Noah Harari’s book Homo Deus. In it, I argued that Runciman was manufacturing paranoia about the so-called “dataists” of Silicon Valley in order to advance the standard progressive narrative that is The Guardian’s raison d’être. Though I stand behind the piece, I also think Runciman and Harari were making a larger point that I glossed over in order to draw more attention to what I believed to be the underlying ideological agenda. Not only has Runciman presented a standard albeit wonky piece of progressive propaganda, he’s also very explicit about the contempt he and his Silicon Valley cohorts hold towards the broader population. Given all that has come to light from the Silicon Valley technorati in the year since the piece was written, the cynical and dehumanized terms in which Runciman describes all of us lowly proles couldn’t be a more transparent view into the malevolent machinations and mindset of these contemptible elites.
The steady media drumbeat of hysteria about the alleged advent of fascism which began before the election has only escalated since Trump took the oath of office. As much as progressives are fond of attributing fascism to conservative ideology, nationalism and the perceived proximity of these phenomena to any kind of white identitarian movement, what they omit is that fascist regimes were socialist at the core. Their success hinged on the regime’s ability to manufacture a uniform consensus which fused the individual with the State. The Left presently dominate every institution which contributes to the formation of ideology. This includes the entire spectrum of educational institutions, the media, the Hollywood entertainment complex, and most importantly, Silicon Valley. Since we now live in a world increasingly driven by social media enabled internet connectivity, the Silicon Valley chokehold on the flow of information and the ways they are intentionally trying to engineer an ideological consensus cannot be ignored. Take, for example, this gem from Runciman’s piece.
Google – the search engine, not the company – doesn’t have beliefs and desires of its own. It doesn’t care what we search for and it won’t feel hurt by our behaviour.
Anyone who isn’t confining themselves to the Google-enabled information Matrix will find this laughably false. Google’s search engine is a product made by a company with a very clear and rigidly enforced beliefs and desires. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to Eric Schmidt himself.
We should be able to give you the right answer just once.
We don’t need to look very hard to discover the myriad ways that Google have gone to great lengths to ensure that you arrive at the “right answer”. Accompanied by her coterie of deep state denizens and media sycophants, Hillary Clinton and the entire Democratic establishment have been engaged in a nonstop collective autistic howl over Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election. However, they remain conveniently silent on the invisible thumb Google placed on the information scale on her behalf when it came to gaming search and autocomplete algorithms.
And then there’s the scourge of so-called “fake news”. Tainted news sources from Macedonian mercenaries and other malignant Russian malefactors allegedly infiltrated social media sites and brainwashed the easily duped sheeple with misinformation. All of this meddling turned public sentiment against poor Hillary and sent the progressive aristocracy into paroxysms of apoplectic rage. Thankfully, our blessed Dataist Overlords are helping the poor, defenseless proles to #RESIST these malicious “waves of information”. After all, we’re apparently little more than an accumulation of information points in an organic skin bag according to Runciman.
Who will “we” be any more? Nothing more than an accumulation of information points. Twentieth-century political dystopias sought to stamp on individuals with the power of the state. That won’t be necessary in the coming century. As Harari says: “The individual will not be crushed by Big Brother; it will disintegrate from within.”
Both Runciman and Harari couldn’t be more forthright about the cynicism and contempt that they hold towards humanity. Both contend that we are “accidents” and that there’s nothing “special” about who we are. But this posture of progressive insouciance is disingenuous and masks the fact that Google and the Silicon Valley technorati are deeply concerned about controlling the range of thought and opinion that can be expressed and heard. If it’s all just a clinical and antiseptic flow of data within a vast network of human and digital nodes, why are they going so far out of their way to limit one set of opinions and privilege the other?
Clearly, Google doesn’t want certain kinds of information to be disseminated. James Damore learned that the hard way when he published the now infamous “Google Memo”.
Add this to the growing list of YouTube content creators who dare to deviate from the technocratic GoodThink, and a pretty clear set of ideological imperatives emerges.
But how could the individual “disintegrate from within” unless the engineers of the social media revolution actually know something about decoupling intelligence and consciousness? Studies are starting to be done on the effects of social media and smartphone usage on the youth, and much of it seems to confirm that the generation being raised inside the internet bubble are experiencing negative side effects. Reports of depression and anxiety increase while attention spans decrease. If the ability to think and evaluate different points of view is being hamstrung, then the business of engineering a consensus becomes an easier task.
And if all this isn’t enough to stir up Alex Jones-esque fever dreams of globalist dystopia, the advent of microchip implants ought to chill your blood. Nothing says Big Brother is Watching quite like a microchip embedded beneath your skin.
Runciman is downplaying the uniqueness of human life and consigning consciousness and volition to the digital hive mind because he wants the proles to get comfortable with their overlords. Clearly, humanity isn’t just a neutral flow of data points because the technorati wouldn’t be spending every conceivable resource on monitoring every facet of human life in order to ensure that no one gets a single unapproved thought into their heads. This is precisely why I argued that there’s nothing inherently malevolent about “waves of information”. Information is incredibly powerful because is the medium through which ideas are transmitted. Ideas and individuals can affect civilization either positively or negatively.
Fortunately, there is a rising tide of technologists who recognize the stultifying omnipresence of Silicon Valley’s influence and are trying to formulate alternatives. Dubbed “alt tech”, this new generation of tech savvy savants are trying to deliver the promise of the information age by building social media platforms that are ideologically neutral and actually honor the principle of free speech. Even if it means building the internet from the ground up by creating new ISPs and domain registrars.
Modern society is standing at a critical juncture. We’ve reached a point in history where the values that have ushered in unprecedented levels of human freedom and prosperity have also given the puppet masters a whole new opportunity to design a set of technological marvels with which to enslave. The problem is that the chains come in very appealing packages. Information is power and ensuring that free access to the marketplace of ideas remains an urgent priority. Even if the Silicon Valley technorati have totalitarian ambitions, they have succeeded in democratizing the marketplace of ideas. The curtain has been pulled back, and they are now clamoring to maintain control of the narrative. Contrary to what David Runciman and his ilk would lead you to believe, you are not just an accumulation of data points waiting for instructions from technocratic overlords. As much as they don’t want it to be true, the individual does matter. Because if it truly didn’t, the technorati wouldn’t have to work so hard trying to control everything you see or hear on the internet.
Mr. Universe: Can’t stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.
I remember being assigned Animal Farm sometime around late grade school. I also remember coming away from it knowing that it had an important message, but not necessarily grasping the full weight of its implications. Whether it was the naïveté of youth or the institutional bias of public education, the poignancy of Animal Farm was mostly lost on me at the time. After having the benefit of the passage of time, a willingness to challenge my own ideological biases and the accumulation of a bit of knowledge since then, I can unequivocally say this. If there is a more cutting and incisive critique of the entire spectrum of radical Leftism than Animal Farm, I haven’t yet read it. Concise yet sweeping in scope, Animal Farm’s sting applies just as sharply to Stalinism as it does to contemporary intersectional feminism and #SocialJustice activism. It’s hard to believe that Orwell considered himself a socialist after reading this and 1984, but as the saying goes, life is sometimes stranger than fiction. Published in 1945, Animal Farm is widely perceived to be a critique of the Bolsheviks and Stalinism, but it more than adequately covers the entire spectrum of Marxist and neo-Marxist thought since the underlying pillars of the ideology remain the same regardless of how the parameters are modified to fit the times and demographics.
One imagines that an allegory filled with anthropomorphized animals would be geared towards kids, but I had definitely forgotten just how heavy the subject matter actually was. Besides being full of surprisingly grim detail leavened ever so slightly by some very dark humor, Animal Farm packs a lot of ideas into a small narrative space. Set somewhere in the English countryside, the animals of Manor Farm live under the occasionally negligent yet basically benign stewardship of Mr. Jones. The boar elder of the farm, Old Major, gathers the collective livestock together to share his revolutionary dream of emancipation for all of the animals living under the oppression of human ownership. Old Major proclaims all of humanity to be cruel oppressors and animals will only be liberated if they band together and rebel against their human owners. Once they’ve cast off the yoke of human ownership, they will finally enjoy a life of unimaginable plenitude and brotherly harmony.
Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever.
Orwell’s ability to synthesize the core essence of Marxist and neo-Marxist thought in such a short space cannot be overstated. Despite the daunting voluminosity and aura of unfathomable depth to this vein of thought, Orwell cuts through the pretentious excesses and insufferable sanctimony and spins out its inevitable conclusions with devastating accuracy. Not only is this anti-capitalist mentality the sole article of faith for anarcho-communists, socialists, and seemingly everyone in the ranks of Antifa, you can simply add a racial component and transport the entire template over to the BLM or feminist worldview in order to have the same readymade good versus evil dichotomy.
Old Major is essentially the Karl Marx of the animal revolution. Like Marx himself, Major had been well cared for by his human patrons. He’d lived a long life and fathered lots of children. He had suffered no cruel treatment that would warrant the creation of a revolutionary doctrine that called for the extermination of humanity. Also like Marx, he sends them off towards their revolutionary future by portraying himself as a prophet who’s been bestowed with a quasi-divine revelation. He recalls a song he heard as a young piglet the words to which he’d long forgotten. Casting away the veil of bourgeois false consciousness that had clouded his thought throughout his life, the full glory of this liberated animal utopia had returned to him in the form of a song called “Beasts of England”.
Beasts of England, beasts of Ireland
Beasts of every land and clime
Hearken to my joyful tidings
Of the golden future time
Soon or late the day is coming
Tyrant Man shall be o’erthrown
And the fruitful fields of England
Shall be trod by beasts alone
Orwell is keenly attuned to the various tools of propaganda that are deployed by demagogues, and the inclusion of this song is one of many brilliant details which exposes the mechanics of socialism when it is implemented. The entire book is a goldmine of metaphorical and symbolic masterstrokes, but putting “Beasts of England” into the mouths of the sheep simply cannot be topped. Anyone who’s ever tweeted about “sheeple” ironically or not owes it all to Orwell. Modeled very closely off the “Socialist Internationale“, the invocation of “Beasts of England” throughout the novel perfectly captures how socialism reduces men to mindless bleating herds and completely short circuits the capacity for independent thought. Whether it’s the various campus outrage mobs who swarm together to shout down the slightest perception of WrongThink or the cult-like mantras of BLM activists, the contemporary manifestations of “Beasts of England” aren’t hard to find.
The Major eventually dies, but the dream of realizing an animal utopia invigorates the minds of the Manor Farm livestock. For some, “Beasts of England” all by itself is sufficient to keep the revolutionary dream alive. After the Major’s death, his pig disciples, Napoleon and Snowball, condense his thought into a doctrine called Animalism. Not only does Animalism serve as a pitch perfect proxy for Marxism, it could easily be seen as dogmatic adherence to any set of ideas used for the purpose of manufacturing a moral consensus, enforcing ideological conformity and consolidating state power. In order to ensure that the utopian dream is fulfilled, the two pigs take it upon themselves to educate their comrades to adopt a revolutionary spirit.
All the animals nodded in complete agreement, and the cleverer ones at once began to learn the Commandments by heart.
These two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments.
The adoption of a revolutionary mindset requires constant education and reinforcement of dogma, so the pigs set out to propagandize their livestock comrades. To their dismay, they discover wide disparities in intelligence, interest and attention. They’re also none too pleased with animals who ask too many questions. Mollie doesn’t understand why she must prepare for the revolution if the revolution is a historical inevitability. Snowball doesn’t have time to get into the details of dialectical materialism, so he just tells her to STFU and stop thinking counter-revolutionary thoughts. Despite the fact that the doctrine of Animalism is comprised of only seven rules, this was a bit much for some. The sheep are the least able to memorize the tenets of Animalism, so the entire doctrine is reduced to one very simplistic dichotomy:
Four legs good, two legs bad!
It sounds even better if you imitate the bleating of sheep when you say the word “bad”. At the end of the day, this is all that Marxism and progressivism inculcates. Proletariat good, bourgeoisie bad! 99% good, 1% bad! Progressives good, conservatives bad! POC good, wypipo bad! Womyn good, m*n bad! Science good, faith bad! Orwell is making a supremely important point about the psychological levers that any ideology pulls. The entire apparatus of human consciousness filters the world through a moral lens of one kind or another. The success of the adoption of Animalism hinged on its ability to ascribe evil and deceit to an entire group. It doesn’t matter if it’s the bourgeoisie, the patriarchy or white supremacy. Ultimately, this mentality would be applied to anyone deemed a traitor to the Animalist revolution. Including animals themselves.
It seemed to them as though Snowball were some kind of invisible influence, pervading the air about them and menacing them with all kinds of dangers.
The revolution comes rather swiftly because they are able to exploit Jones’ drunken negligence. After a brief but violent coup d’état, the animals take control of the farm. They celebrate by destroying all artifacts and materials that were associated with humanity. This thirst for purging and destroying the relics of the Enemy is a pattern that has played out in both the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, and is mirrored today in the vandalistic rampages of ISIS, Antifa and campus Jacobins alike.
All the animals capered with joy when they saw the whips going up in flames.
Their first act was to gallop in a body right round the boundaries of the farm, as though to make quite sure that no human being was hiding anywhere upon it; then they raced back to the farm buildings to wipe out the last traces of Jones’s hated reign.
After Snowball is driven off the farm and branded an enemy of the Animal Farm State, not only is he blamed for all their misfortune, but his historically heroic role in the Battle of the Cowshed is erased. Even worse, collaboration with Snowball, or suspicion thereof, is a treasonous act punishable by death. I had definitely forgotten just how dark Animal Farm was because I had to pick my jaw off the floor after reading the gruesome details of Napoleon’s purge of counter-revolutionaries. I don’t know which demographic Orwell had in mind when he wrote Animal Farm, but even the psychological distance of anthropomorphic animals doesn’t really diminish the sheer brutality of these scenes. But it’s both appropriate and true. Whether it’s the trial of Bukharin or the racial supremacist neo-Bolsheviks at Evergreen or the hypersensitive Yale triggerkin berating Nicholas Christakis, the Animalist pursuit of WrongThink always looks the same. The only real difference is the severity of the punishment.
The enforcement of Animalist orthodoxy resulted in the destruction of free speech and eventually gave way to despotism. The phenomenon to which Orwell alludes is bone chilling in its ramifications; secular liberalism and the pure pursuit of equality taken to its fullest conclusion necessarily leads to totalitarianism. After Snowball is deposed, Napoleon shuts down all public debate. Under Animalism, the individual not only cannot be trusted to self-govern, but must subordinate himself to the diktats of the anointed vanguard and their emissaries. The animal proles want to contest the edict, but they lack the critical thinking skills that can only be cultivated in a system which encourages a competition of thought. Since Animalist doctrine required strict fealty to core principles in order to forge a unified consensus, post-revolution Animal Farm could not forestall its inexorable slide towards totalitarianism and absolute thought control.
The animals would still assemble on Sunday mornings to salute the flag, sing Beasts of England, and receive their orders for the week; but there would be no more debates.
The prohibition of free speech also liberated Napoleon and his cohorts to completely control information, alter the tenets of Animalism, and rewrite history itself. When Napoleon eventually declares that trade with humans must be permitted in order to procure necessities that the farm simply could not produce, it also required the abandonment of previously sacred Animalist commandments. After Napoleon changed one tenet, it was merely a matter of time until all of Animalism had been rewritten to the point where the porcine politburo had exempted themselves from every commandment they imposed on the proles.
Among its many pointed critiques, post-revolution Animal Farm is yet another righteous kick in the teeth to the failure of economic planning. Though the animals were somewhat successful in carrying out the duties of managing Animal Farm in the beginning, the age old problems of thwarted incentives, mismanaged resources, and inadequate technology that have plagued socialist economies throughout the ages reared their ugly heads. Food shortages and rationing became a way of life for all the proles except for the porcine Kremlin and their canine goon squad.
In addition to being throttled by the absence of price signals and normal forces of supply and demand, the revolutionary ruminants of Animal Farm had to contend with the problem of producing a harvest using a population of animals with wildly disparate skill and intelligence levels and none of the humane incentives normally cultivated under a healthy market economy. Since Animalist (Marxist) orthodoxy proclaimed humanity to be parasitic, it blinded the hidebound herd to the laws of market economics. As clever as the cloven hooved revolutionary clerisy were in fomenting animosity towards humans, what they failed to grasp was that humans possessed skills they simply did not have. Animalism had nothing to say about how exactly economic life would carry on after the revolution. It simply indoctrinated the idea that the act of comandeering the means of production by force would somehow magically bring about an era of unbounded abundance.
The storyline pertaining to Mollie the horse offers a scathing rebuke to contemporary feminism. Mollie is a mare who likes the attention of humans (men), likes to accentuate her beauty with ribbons, and likes the indulgences (sugar) that are created by humans (men). Prior to the revolution, Orwell describes Mollie’s questions as the “stupidest” ones, but they’re only stupid to Animalist elites like Snowball who care only about submission and obedience from the herd. Mollie quite reasonably wonders about the availability of sugar and the permissibility of ribbons after the revolution. Snowball haughtily mansplains to her that neither will be permitted because they are the product of mankind and indulging either pleasure is counter-revolutionary. Mollie finds her fears of post-revolution Animal Farm confirmed when she discovers that the very creature comforts and attention she enjoyed from humans had been outlawed by the porcine politburo. Mollie defects and returns to human ownership, but her existence is never acknowledged again by the remainder of Animal Farm.
Snowball’s dismissal of Mollie’s concern perfectly encapsulates feminism’s sheer hostility to marriage, feminine beauty and manhood itself as it is expressed through the entire “body positivity” movement. Feminists are hostile to women who are naturally attractive and physically fit. Especially towards those who allow themselves to be “objectified” by the male gaze. Mollie wants the attention and companionship of humans (men) while Boxer and Snowball treat her with suspicion and contempt for having these desires. Fat positive activists promote the idea that losing weight and exercising restraint around eating is some patriarchal conspiracy to force body size conformity, but so-called “body positivity” is simply an overt attempt to normalize a natural tendency in women to seek indulgence and remove any accountability to make themselves more attractive to men. It is also a potent reminder that, by and large, women like to beautify themselves and to be recognized for it. Even the most fat positive, pierced, tattooed, blue haired, non-binary, black lipstick wearing feminist is looking for validation of her looks even if it only comes from their personal online hugbox of sycophants.
For anyone who thinks that Orwell belongs to the Left and his seemingly inexplicable attachment to democratic socialism somehow exonerates socialism, the joke’s on you. Over the years, many of the most trenchant critiques of leftism have come from within the ranks of the Left. The message of Animal Farm couldn’t be more explicit or urgent. If I knew why people, Orwell included, remained committed to the Left after enduring an ideological wrecking ball like Animal Farm, I certainly wouldn’t be writing this piece. Regardless, Animal Farm is happening right before our eyes. The first step towards actual liberation is recognizing that the only chains that exist are the ones that the ideology itself places within your own mind.
Samizdat 