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I just watched this and while I enjoyed the aesthetics, any political theme or allegory was completely lost on me. It reminded me of the Matrix prequels. The socio-economic system on the train has little if anything in common with capitalism. Just like in Elysium there are rich people (who are evil) and poor people (who are good) and that's pretty much it. At the end we get another all-knowing Architect. We find out that revolution is futile, that it's just another control mechanism. The real solution, as it turns out, is instead to destroy civilization completely and "return to nature". Apparently humanity's radiant future is to fight polar bears for food in the Ninth Circle of Hell. I can only see this as reactionary nihilism.
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Mar 9, 2015 12:00
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Best Giraffe posted:How a movie can talk about poor people eating babies to survive, and people can watch that movie, and not get it, is truly a sign of the end times. rip satire u were so young So Snowpiercer is a satire of early 18th century utilitarian economics? That can't be right. I don't think "getting it" is the problem here. Snowpiercer simply fails as an allegory/polemic/satire due to a lack of ideological clarity and understanding.
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Mar 17, 2015 20:38
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Best Giraffe posted:So you're saying that the system has little in common with capitalism, but the whole A Modest Proposal reference is a point in favor of it in fact doing that. So let's think about how it connects to A Modest Proposal; obviously there is the baby eating, and the dehumanizing system that rounds people up like cattle, and counts them off so they can dispose of the 'excess', and so on. It also differs, somewhat, in that you have the desperate dregs of society eating children themselves, rather than selling them to the rich, so maybe that's worth pursuing. But films are art, and art is really just supposed to make you think about these things. So does Snowpiercer make you think about these things? Does it raise questions, interesting parallels with our actual world, and does it do so in a way that grips you and holds you into the fictional reality of the movie? If it does, then it has succeeded, and if it didn't, well, then maybe you didn't "get it", or maybe it's just not to your taste, or whatever. But I think that the movie supports this much discussion is proof enough that it succeeds as an allegorical work. I mean, plenty of people got some really interesting readings out of it! Yes, I'm saying it botches the allegory. And it doesn't really connect to A Modest Proposal except on a very superficial level. There's the baby eating, yes. But that goes away once the system intervenes, through the Illuminati plot and the introduction of protein blocks. After that, neither the rich nor the poor eat babies. In fact, only the Sacred Engine eats children, like a god that demands human sacrifice. And as for A Modest Proposal, it goes without saying that Swift obviously wasn't satirizing the practice of cannibalism in 18th century Ireland. So how exactly does Snowpiercer connect to A Modest Proposal? And how is that connection in any way relevant today? Or, if it didn't, maybe that is because it failed. In what way does it raise questions or interesting parallels with our actual world? To me it looks like a garbled mess of underdeveloped ideas. The train is essentially a theocracy, and its society a rigid caste system where your position is preordained. To the tail inhabitants, it is a system of Orwellian totalitarianism (reduced to clichés and revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of its nature). But the train is also an "ecosystem" that must be carefully regulated. To that end, there is a preposterous Illuminati plot to cull the lower castes periodically through phony insurrections (similar to The Matrix Reloaded). I honestly can't see what there is to "get" here, it's just a mess.
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Mar 27, 2015 17:08
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