I have chosen an unconventional landscape to represent me. It’s from the movie Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott. It shows Los Angeles in an alternate 2019. It would be considered cyber-punk. In this universe, planet Earth is overcome by pollution and environmental destruction. The wealthy and privileged have all moved to either Earths moon or Mars, where it is cleaner and safer. I choose this landscape for two reasons, 1. Blade Runner represents a big part of teenage and early college years, it has been my favorite film for almost 10 years (discovered it my senior year of high school) and 2. I think that the Earth it represents is very relevant to ecofeminism.
the Los Angeles of Blade Runner carries my history in a lot of ways, the film exposed me to new artistic concepts that I had not encountered before, it was the first movie I really analyzed. The score for the film was done by a Greek electronic composer called Vangelis, since first seeing the movie, there have been only a few times when a track from it does not appear on a playlist of mine. My room was covered with posters of Blade Runner and other cyber-punk anime and films, I rarely kept the lights on. Whether I realized it or not, I had effectively created a cyber-punk world in my bedroom. I think I was attracted to cyberpunk because it made the whole world as lonely as I had felt, in cyberpunk settings there is typically more technology than people, for a while this was representative of my life, I spent a lot more time starting at a computer or television screen, rather than engaging with people in the real world.
In the film the politics of Blade Runner are not well explained beyond, corporate control and apathy. But the book that it is based on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Phillip K Dick, does. In this Los Angeles, there are only two types of people left on Earth, which are represented by the books 2 protagonists Rick, and Sebastian. Rick is a working class police officer, and Dave is a chickenhead (a derogatory way of referring to the people who have suffered cognitive damage as a result of radiation). All of the people in LA are part of a fake religion called Mercerism, which many don’t believe is actually true but believe in it because it makes them feel better. This does not build up a good base for a bedrock of Democracy.
The basis for Willaims Bedrock of Democracy is that both sides of a political spectrum are informed and aware of the facts. While there is a political divide in this fictional LA (mostly over the issue of rights for androids) it doesn’t go too deep into politics. What I do know is that a society made up of only the poor and cognitively impaired is going to be easy to manipulate politically (not that wealth equal intelligence, just that when you are concerned about food and shelter, politics becomes more difficult to pay attention to). I personally can easily see the people from the Blade Runner universe electing a person like Donald Trump or Michael Bloomberg to be president. It is easy for an oligarch or a populist to appeal to people that feel disenfranchised.
Barbara Kingslover is an American novelist whose work often focuses on connections between humans and nature. Kingslover believes that humans need wilderness. The Oxford dictionary defines Wilderness as “an uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region”, taken this way I don’t think anybody would consider wilderness a requirement. But perhaps humans do need an unknown, we have always been an exploratory species. But it is easy for humans to take that exploration gene and turn it into a destructive element. The LA in Blade Runner is filled with wilderness but it is an unnatureal wilderness, a desolate mostly uninhabitable planet in which few humans are left and they live in cities with little nature and little to warm them besides the hum of neon lights advertising a corporate product. Maybe we don’t need wilderness, but we do need nature, we need other people, we need life. Blade Runner represent a warmth to me, I feel nostalgia for it and it has always been a comfort to me but it is not a world I wish to live in.
That was fantastic, Nick. Thanks for that. My post is unconventional as well, and yours really hit the mark for me. Your line, “It is easy for an oligarch or a populist to appeal to people that feel disenfranchised” is exactly what has occurred, in a nutshell. People that feel like they have nothing to lose will try anything.
I am also a huge Sci-fi fan and the Matrix trilogy are my top 10 list, along with Arrival and Children of Men. Apocalyptic I would use to describe yours and two of mine. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your post!
Greetings Nick.
The music juxtaposes with the skyline was enjoyable, and your city “Blade Runner”most interesting. “A society of the poor and cognitively (mostly) would be easy to manipulate politically.” This American society, I believe has less of such persons, but were able to be and continue to be manipulated politically, and many are not disenfranchised. With the definition of wilderness “uncultivated…” are such individuals easier to manipulate, or is it the unknown-fear of it? Are the easily manipulated more prone to destructive elements? There are proposals, bills, lobbyists and support for many environmental protections to be overturned. One wonders if they were, would Americans then inhabit a desolate mostly uninhabited planet with few humans with little nature and little to warm them? There is no place here for Williams’s Bedrock of Democracy.
bridget.