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Elysium

SolitaryWalker

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Just got back from the midnight show.

Really is just a big budget remake of District 9 but without prawns and higher profile actors.

Not bad, but was expecting more.

Funny thing: I actively went out of my way to avoid spoilers and plot details...just to have it ruined 5 mins before the movie started with a pre-movie featurette. The audience was groaning when it ended.

Stop it Hollywood. Just stop.

I wonder how long it will take for Fox News to vociferously denounce the film as "communist propaganda"? Is it not an ignominy that the "hard-earned" property of the affluent was pillaged and plunder by the hordes of indigent animals who deserved to die of their maladies and privations? The rich earned their right to be on Elysium only through industry, thrift and the preponderant superiority of their personal integrity to that of the less well off who have no right to even stand within breathing distance of them! How dare they lay their filthy paws on what rightfully belongs to the legitimate members of the highest socioeconomic echelons of society!? And what is it with this notion that if corporations are to be allowed to behave in a manner they do today, our planet will become severely overpopulated, rife with lethal epidemics and plummeting standards of living!? Free-market is the way to go, it is the way to do what you want, when you want and how you want it: it is the key to maximal freedom for all!


I'm an aspiring rich person. I am taking their side, because I aspire to be there some day.


You're not going to get there just by talking about it. Start developing connections with the investors, financiers and the associates of big businesses, but that alone won't enable you to achieve your goal. To be one of them, you must cultivate the dispositions of character that empower them to sustain a lifestyle you covet. So, if you ever experience naive sentiments of wishing to help the underprivileged or that those who are not well off may deserve a second chance, you must comprehensively expurgate those insidiously noxious thoughts from your worldview. The difference between an accomplished individual and one who merely dreams of becoming accomplished is that the latter is willing to make the sacrifices that are needed for success. If you want to be a professional basketball player, you better expect to radically revise your worldview to get where you need to be, so don't expect to have it any easier if you want to be among the prosperous. Your chances of getting there with the type middle-class mentality are nearly zero, so begin undergoing intense ideological training and if you are not a psychopath, attempt to emulate their behavioral repertoire in every walk of life.


(there didn't seem to be a reason for their scarcity other than a tiring "RICH PEOPLE ARE MEAN BOOHOO" cliche)

It is quite realistic that if our transnational corporations continue to depredate the natural environment at the rate they do now and the population continues to increase at its current rate, our planet will be heavily overpopulated, drained of natural resources and rife with lethal epidemics. Rich people are not "meaner" than members of other socioeconomic groups, considerable empirical evidence exists to suggest that it is merely natural for most people to act in the interest of the socioeconomic group that they belong to. Had the poor been in the dominant position, they would have oppressed the rich just as much and that is why Aristotle argued that the middle class should be in the position of power. A government that represents the middle-class is less likely to launch a systematic attack on the upper class than the dispossessed socioeconomic class, but they are also more likely to grant the lower class significant opportunities to achieve upward mobility than the upper class.

The Elysium was a critique of not only the American politico-economic regime, but the regime of any country where the upper class is in the position of power. Because the film concludes with the transference of power from the elites to the impecunious plebeians, it is conceivable that it advocates a revolution from below where the highly underprivileged seize political control. Indeed, the meek did inherit the Earth in Elysium, but not in the way Jesus seems to have promised, but the similarity between the proposed end-results of Communism and Christianity are remarkably similar. In other words, there are serious issues with politico-economic regimes that vest the nearly absolute power in the hands of the elites as that is where we end up in the Elysium situation, but they are no less serious than those of regimes where such power is conferred upon the most underprivileged. How long do you think the utopia of the Elysian revolution would have lasted had the plot been taken to its logical conclusion? It would take less than a decade for a populist demagogue to exploit the anarchic political environment to set up a regime very reminiscent of a communist dictatorship. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a revolution "from below" that led to a different result: the solution to the problem that the regime of "government by the rich" poses is not an armed insurrection, but piecemeal social engineering that will gradually transfer the power from the elites to the middle-class. Admittedly, this solution may take generations or even epochs, but it constitutes a far more promising strategy of social reform than the militaristic revolutions from below.
 

Totenkindly

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^^ This analysis is probably far more than the fifth-grade-level the movie was written at deserves. It's hard to take Elysium that seriously. One of the villains of the piece actually said, "Don't let that dying irradiating guy ruin the bedsheets in the hospital ward, I don't want to pay for new ones." There wasn't much attempt to present any sort of nuance in the depiction of social forces; the poor were morally heroic, the rich were frauds, and that was that. The resolution not only was false (it won't result in liberation) but any ground gained would be short-lived, as you've noted here.

I don't think it was concerned with serious correction of social problems, that was just a veneer through which what was told was essentially just an action movie about a dying man risking himself for someone else, and operated on a very simple, basic level.
 

SolitaryWalker

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One of the villains of the piece actually said, "Don't let that dying irradiating guy ruin the bedsheets in the hospital ward, I don't want to pay for new ones."

Would you say that this is an uncommon attitude for a factory owner or a CEO of a transnational corporation to have?
 

Totenkindly

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Would you say that this is an uncommon attitude for a factory owner or a CEO of a transnational corporation to have?

Expressed in such an extreme cliche fashion... yes. Normally it's veiled in layers of nuance, if it exists.

The movie didn't take a lot of thought to write.
 

SolitaryWalker

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Expressed in such an extreme cliche fashion...

My question was whether or not modern CEOs were likely to have such an attitude rather than if they were likely to make a public statement of that nature.

Normally it's veiled in layers of nuance, if it exists.

It is veiled in layers of nuance in televised public statements and corporate cocktail parties, but would it be veiled in a private conversation where the CEOs feel comfortable expressing their true attitudes freely?

It would seem rather peculiar for them to utter such a crude statement as that a radioactive guy should not be cared for, but should instead be seen as a potential financial liability, but that's because we tend to assume that CEOs are normal people. Some of them are, but empirical evidence shows that a significant percentage of CEOs have distinctive psychopathic traits and the psychopaths tend to outperform their normal counterparts in this metier (http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/other-psychology-topics/63603-not-psychopath.html)

The movie didn't take a lot of thought to write.

Perhaps not, but it offered a rather realistic indication of where the world may be heading if we don't find a way to curb corporate power soon enough. After all, the transnational corporations have no incentive to avoid the situation on earth that the film depicted, do they? It is also rather persuasive that a significant percentage of business and government leaders have worldviews similar to those that the villains of the film have displayed, wouldn't you agree?
 

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You're not going to get there just by talking about it. Start developing connections with the investors, financiers and the associates of big businesses, but that alone won't enable you to achieve your goal. To be one of them, you must cultivate the dispositions of character that empower them to sustain a lifestyle you covet. So, if you ever experience naive sentiments of wishing to help the underprivileged or that those who are not well off may deserve a second chance, you must comprehensively expurgate those insidiously noxious thoughts from your worldview. The difference between an accomplished individual and one who merely dreams of becoming accomplished is that the latter is willing to make the sacrifices that are needed for success. If you want to be a professional basketball player, you better expect to radically revise your worldview to get where you need to be, so don't expect to have it any easier if you want to be among the prosperous. Your chances of getting there with the type middle-class mentality are nearly zero, so begin undergoing intense ideological training and if you are not a psychopath, attempt to emulate their behavioral repertoire in every walk of life.

Don't give me advice for problems I don't have, please.
 

SolitaryWalker

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Don't give me advice for problems I don't have, please.

Yeah, you think you can ride roughshod over anyone to maximize your personal prosperity? Why don't you go out to the real world and see if you really have what it takes to be rich, you just might not be callous, ruthless, single-minded and egocentric enough to play with the big boys.
 

skylights

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I haven't seen the movie yet, but I already appreciate its addressing the economic gap, regardless of its quality. Interesting that out of Hollywood comes a product addressing a major issue perpetuated, in part, by Hollywood.
 

Totenkindly

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My question was whether or not modern CEOs were likely to have such an attitude rather than if they were likely to make a public statement of that nature.

It is veiled in layers of nuance in televised public statements and corporate cocktail parties, but would it be veiled in a private conversation where the CEOs feel comfortable expressing their true attitudes freely? (etc)

Well, I'm here to discuss the movie Elysium and whether the way it was written and produced made sense, and that's where my focus is. IOW, I'm not trying to veer off and debate the psychology of CEOs and social dynamics in general, I'm only discussing whether the way that Elysium presented such things was a fair and intelligent view. If you would like to discuss broad topics not in relation to Elysium, feel free to start a thread for that.

In that context, the movie couldn't decide whether it wanted to create a farce (where such extreme depictions of its characters would have contributed to the humor quotient and been appropriate) vs some more dramatic movie trying to make a relevant social statement, where caricatured depictions of characters will detract from taking the social commentary seriously. In the end, it seems more like the movie really was supposed to be nothing more than an action movie with some "humanitarian" claptrap thrown in to drive it forward.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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Yeah, you think you can ride roughshod over anyone to maximize your personal prosperity? Why don't you go out to the real world and see if you really have what it takes to be rich, you just might not be callous, ruthless, single-minded and egocentric enough to play with the big boys.

Hey, if he doesn't want to take sensible advice, he doesn't have to.
 

The Ü™

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To me, Jodie Foster didn't qualify for top billing. Her character struck me as being played by a washed out actress who isn't really trying and belongs in the "and" credits or in a Robert Rodriguez movie.
 

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What doesn't work very well and what power structure?
Money often translates to power; people make money by owning businesses (used in a loose sense) and having assets. These businesses, their support systems, associated assets, and what has been established to keep the businesses going are essentially the power structure. People with money have more power than politicians because they can influence the decisions of the politicians. They control the media, so they influence the decisions of common folk. It only goes the other way around so far. Basically people with large amounts of money don't easily want to give it up. If you are going to be one of those people you will have to have something to sell which people want to buy, and which fits into the current market. Until then, sympathizing with them isn't going to change your status. If you never become one of them, you have just supported the fact that they have what you are never going to, and the system that supports it. You're gambling and taking a big risk.

Suppose instead of money, these statistics (if true) were changed to power: the top one percent has 80% of the power in this country and the bottom 80% has 7% of the power. Would you call that a democracy? Since money/wealth and power are largely correlated, by supporting the current status quo you are effectively saying you are anti-democracy and pro-plutocracy/oligarchy/aristocracy. You are entitled to your opinion, but it doesn't benefit you currently unless you have a concrete plan and realistic prospects for getting into the ruling class. Do you?
 

Azure Flame

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Yeah, you think you can ride roughshod over anyone to maximize your personal prosperity? Why don't you go out to the real world and see if you really have what it takes to be rich, you just might not be callous, ruthless, single-minded and egocentric enough to play with the big boys.

have we met?
 

Azure Flame

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I like how I'm being talked down to for aspiring to have more money than most people.

Ya'll can suck my dick.
 

Blackmail!

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Well, to my mind is a person's attempt to speak one language while having been born and raised with the phonetics of a different one, so those sounds/phonetics are being used as substitutes for the real ones they cannot emulate. So there should be some consistency there. It wasn't as bad as Planet Earth (which was pretty dreadful), but it definitely seemed like sometimes her accent would be heavy on some words, then on the same sounds in other words it was not. It also felt very forced.

That of course is being said as an observer and someone who can't speak another language anyway.

Well, actually Jodie Foster is not only fluent in French, she speaks a perfect French, like a native, without even the slightest trace of foreign accent.

So her accent is not forced.
 

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Expressed in such an extreme cliche fashion... yes. Normally it's veiled in layers of nuance, if it exists.

The movie didn't take a lot of thought to write.

Unfortunately, it's not a cliche.

The real world is even worst than that, and I've witnessed similar scenes countless times in Asia or Africa, in countries or situations where indeed, you have no middle class. The ruling class is most of the time totally impervious to any human feeling, and they rule with an iron fist.
This movie is disappointing somehow because this is isn't science fiction, and yet, it's not realistic enough (especially because you have a good ending and tons of fluffy feelings). This kind of segregation is already happening everywhere, and the Western world is Elysium. We live in a surreal bubble of prosperity and most of the American audience doesn't seem to be really aware of it, or of the huge price the rest of mankind pays to maintain the so-called "American way of life". We are aristocrats and dilletantes, compared to what happens everywhere else.

In 2013, the majority of mankind already lives in slums, and many of them are considerably worst than the one pictured in Mexico City.
 

Totenkindly

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Well, actually Jodie Foster is not only fluent in French, she speaks a perfect French, like a native, without even the slightest trace of foreign accent.

So her accent is not forced.

Then why did it sound so stilted and inconsistent?

We're not talking about her ability to speak French, we're talking about her ability to speak English with a French accent, which is not the same thing.
 

Blackmail!

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I'm an aspiring rich person. I am taking their side, because I aspire to be there some day.

Have you ever studied in Harvard, Berkeley, Yale or Princeton?

I think it's time to realize that it's almost impossible to reach the world where I live for ordinary guys like you. Be realistic, and guess why.
We simply do not share the same cultural capital.
 
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