baelnic the Braindead wrote:
I didn't understand why people were upset with the "politics" of the movie. It's in the alternate future/sci-fi genre. Didn't Star Trek teach us anything? We can always change the future if we try.
That's *exactly* why people get upset with the politics of a film like this. The "problem" is presented as fact to the audience (conservative government run amok). The whole point of presenting it that way is to get folks to make the conclusion you just did: "We can always change things so it doesn't happen that way...".
How exactly do you think that change manefests in today's world? It's not exactly a difficult thing to see...
The "problem" is that if you don't happen to agree with the starting premise (conservative government will lead to world totalitarianism), then you're going to see the "solution" as flawed. But you know that most viewers wont see that since there's no time spent in the film discussing *why* the problem occured (not in the broader context of conservative v liberal at least). It's presented as fact. Conservative agenda's caused disaster and only "the people" rising up against it will save the world from domination. The viewer is not invited (or even really allowed) to think long about whether that's actually a likely result, nor how it might apply to our politics.
My personal problem? Historically, that sort of regime has arisen, not from a conservative movement, but from a liberal one. So to me, the implication presented via the assumption's in the film are not just wrong, but they are backwards. Using the story as a vehicle to try to get people behind a movement to "fight the evil conservatives" is actually *more* likely to result in that exact kind of totalitarian regime. But that's just my opinion on the politics of the film. You're free to disagree...
Hitler rose to power via a liberal socialist movement. Stalin rose to power via a liberal socialist movement. Mao rose to power via a liberal socialist movement. Pol Pot rose to power via a liberal socialist movement. Think *very* carefully about which political agenda in the US today is the more dangerous, and which is more likely to lead to the kind of brutal totalitarian regime depicted in the film. Then take a gander at SCOTUS rulings like
Kelo v New London, look at which justices took which position and why, and then tell me exactly how much the liberal agenda *really* is about protecting the rights of "the people".