The Internet Anxiety

War Games has never been one of my favorites, hell I kind of down right dislike it. The dialogue is forced, every character is two dimensional, and events happen simply because the plot demanded it. But other than that, I am glad it is in this class because it reflects the social anxiety of the 80's concerning the internet. This is increasingly important, because the power and the mystique of the internet is still around today.

The article explains that when War Games was released it created a flurry of news articles and reports on if it could actually happen. So much so that it forced Congress to impose legislative acts regarding the internet. NORAD even had to come out and make a statement informing the public that a system of checks and balances are in place that present a "War Games Scenario."

To a filmmaker, this is the highest praise, starting a discussion about the themes in your movie that actually effect real world issues. The fact that a simple movie about government hacking can cause such a riot shows the publics anxiety about this unknown internet at the time. The internet was fairly new, for the public at least, and we did not know about it's true power. War Games showed the tip of the iceberg of what hackers really can do.

The older general in the movie represented the older generation. He was not embracing of the computer's power and wanted everything to be done the old fashioned way, with human involvement making the decisions, which is how it is always done at NORAD. Lightman and the tech guy at NORAD represented the newer generation. The tech guy showed that computers can take care of human error, and to some extent they can but the internet was in such a premature state that it would be irresponsible to base a system around that. Lightman showed the power of the internet in the hands of the teenager who knows exactly what they wanted to do.

The internet was a huge social anxiety, and I think it still is. The article describes it as a "hacker mystique" and I think that that is a completely accurate term. The fact that hackers have access to bank accounts, plane tickets, school grades, and government database, they can control the world. And when you control all of those, you do not want to be their enemy. The situation in War Games may not be completely possible with how NORAD is set up but it is still probable. And even then, hackers can find many other ways to control the outcome of something.

Today we still have that hacker mystique about us. 4chan with the click of a mouse can take down massive credit card company sites or find the address of any single person in the world. Get on their bad side and you will be in a world of hurt. Because of this, pushes have been trying to be made to get rid of the so called net neutrality, the fact that every piece of information on the internet should be treated the same and therefore the users should not be charged or discriminated based on what content they access. This of course flies in the face of 4chan and they backers of this act have been put on blast, so to speak, on the internet. I'm not sure how much the public fears the internet today, seeing as how it is ingrained into almost every aspect of our lives. I think the people that back acts like SOPA and similar ones are just like the General and fear net neutrality or they are using it as levereage to grab a profit with internet providers.

I am a strong supporter of net neutrality and I think that all information should be free. I understand that many social anxieties come from this debate and that social anxieties have been around since the birth of the internet, and I think they will always be here.

Considering the future: Blade Runner and Her.

The future has always been interpreted in vastly different ways, as it should. Everyone's idea of the future should be different, this is what lets everyone's ideas combine to create the future that we will one day inhabit. From Blade Runner to Back to the Future 2, the future can take radically different forms depending on one person's vision. The reading suggested that the future that Blade Runner took place in is something that we should strive for but I have to disagree, saying that the future from the new movie Her is the one we should be striving for.

In Blade Runner, future LA is a mix between Hong Kong, present day LA, and present day NYC. The mixture of all races, classes, and social statures is very prominent and is shown in the opening street scene. The reading brings up a good quote on how this is like present day LA with the "artificially controlled political chaos." Although I feel that most city planning is centered around this idea, it is mostly shown in Blade Runner how Harrison Ford is pushed and squeezes into a small booth to eat a dinner off the street. The city in Blade Runner feels like NYC because it is built upward. The opening show shows the vastness of the city, much like present day LA, but instead of it being fairly flat, the buildings are much much taller, spitting fire into the sky. The Asian influence is very present also with the all of the billboards and Asian residents.

The reading commends this future for it's mixing of cultures and shopping mall streets, but I don't necessarily think this is a comfortable life. I for one would not want to live there. Maybe it was all the rain, but the city looked very dark, depressed, and polluted by all the factories. I think a much more comfortable, and more realistic future, is the one presented in the new movie Her.

Her takes place in near future LA and draws influence from both present day LA and Shanghai. Future LA is not presented in a high tech way with floating cars, gadgets that solve everything, and a radically different city design. Her just simply shows a realistic future with just some minor differences. The city is more spread out. Unlike Blade Runner, there are an abundance of parks and flat areas that the main characters go to. that doesn't mean that there aren't any huge buildings. Many buildings from Shanghai were added into the city's skyline. The air looked clean also and everything had a slick look but not in a super futuristic way, it still felt comfortable.

I think that with the future, we also bring about new technology and new ideas to fix the problems were are faced with. The future may look bleak now, with problems that seem like there is no solution to but I have hope for the future and my hope is that we will all realize what has to be done. I don't think anyone would pick to live in Blade Runner LA over Her LA and I think that it is this that will save the future.

Blade Runner made choices about the future to further the story and I do not doubt the instances of these at all. A Blade Runner future could happen, there is no doubting that. But idealizing it like the reading does, picking out the small good that comes out of a future that is mostly destructive is counterintuitive to wishing for a future that includes the best of both movies. I have hope for the near future, I just hope it isn't filled with weird androids that look a little like David Bowie... hmm or do I.

AND ON THE EIGHTH DAY GOD CREATED REESES PIECES

The world is filled with stories. Everything we consume is a basic story. From the history class we attend, to the television we watch when we get home. And there is no doubt that stories need to have structure. A beginning and an end, inciting events, etc. Even seemingly plotless movies like Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers still retains at least some basic structure. By realizing how stories are told and why some stories are more popular than others, parallels can be drawn. Joseph Campbell picked up on this and wrote The Hero's Journey, and showed everyone that all stories are more or less the same.

Now, by saying that they are the same I am not saying that they are the same movie over and over again, although that happens from time to time cough Transformers cough. These are basic structure models that movies, and all stories are woven with and a good film takes this structure and makes something unique. There are some exceptions though, because there are good movies that do not follow this structure, some that come to mind are the Mobius Strip-esque movies that Charlie Kaufman writes. Now that we understand that most stories may be similar, we get into E.T. and the Christ Story.

Now Frank Tomasulo makes some good points in this article The Gospel according to Speilberg in E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial and I don't always disagree with him. Although I do find that some of his points are a bit of a stretch when saying that E.T. is expressly unique in mirroring the Christ story. Yes, it is a story of separation, trials of initiation, and return, but so is Superman and Harry Potter. The Christ story follows the same structure as The Hero's Journey and by comparing certain story elements that match up seems moot because they both follow the same structure.

I think it is a stretch when Tomasulo calls E.T.'s death a "high-tech crucifixion. Come on, what does that even mean?! In reality it was never fully shown what was killing E.T. but it was implied that it was because our earth could not sustain his life, plus all he ate was candy and that can't be good for you. Again, Tomasulo says there is even an "empty tomb" scene in both narratives. This is just a basic reveal and is not specific to the Christ story. Just because something was there and when someone looked it wasn't there does not mean that their intention was to reference the empty tomb in the Christ story.

Although E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial does hit some of the same plot points as the Christ story, their journey is in fact very different. Jesus was very much a leader in his life and people who followed him blindly did what he said. In E.T., if Elliot was not there E.T. surely would have died and even then he was only seen by few as "godly."

I'm not refuting the fact that there are many parallels between the two narratives. The white clothed, glowing heart image of E.T. is hard to argue. I think that Tomasulo argument was weak because E.T. is not specific enough to the Christ story and he was trying to find parallels that were not there between the two narratives to support his argument. It would have been much more cohesive to read an article about how they both mirrored Joseph Campbell's, The Hero's Journey and showed how they are both similar to that. 

Also, if we are going to worship an alien... it might was well be ALF.