After a year that could be charitably described as 'challenging,' we start 2021 with the chance to make things better. There isn't anything magical about the changeover in the year. It is a completely arbitrary marker that parts of the world have decided has meaning, but that doesn't mean it doesn't provide the opportunity to start again.
People are generally pretty terrible at predicting the future. It is not really anyone's fault. The world is complicated, people are complicated, chance, and chaos factor largely into our lives. Films that are set in the future aren't predictions based on careful consideration of what is coming but instead are used to write our current fears and hopes at that time as bigger and more broadly examined.
It is interesting to see that two visions of 2021 have similar fears and hopes for us.
Moon Zero Two (1969) is a silly satire of the future and specifically an American driven future of cowboys, expansionism, and hyper-capitalism. It is basically just a western set on the moon but told in a garish plastic style. It is the collision of the cowboy icon and the disposable modern world of 1969. The goals of people haven't changed one bit, it is the acquisition of money, and power. People are willing to kill for it if necessary. Corporations rule the lives of the common person.
Johnny Mnemonic (1995) is a silly satire of the future and specifically a Japanese-American driven future of cowboys, expansionism, and hyper-capitalism. The expansionism here is in data. Physical concerns like money and power all exist at the core as an electronic code rather than an asteroid made out of sapphire, but the core threat comes from the same place. The goals of people haven't changed one bit, it is the acquisition of money, and power. People are willing to kill for it if necessary. Corporations rule the lives of the common person.
Where Moon Zero Two takes its tale of acquisition out into space, Johnny Mnemonic takes it inward, specifically into the mind of our main character. Faceless corporations put the stars in their grasp. Faceless corporations put our minds in their grasps. It’s easy to laugh off the excesses of both of these films in the actual 2021 (so far) but in both cases neither is far from the truth. Space is becoming increasingly commercialized and our personal data and identities are already bought and sold online. It’s just that the set dressing is a little dourer. The important thing is that these films show that we still resist. Even at the most hopeless, there's the will fight back and carve out a life worth living.
People are generally pretty terrible at predicting the future, but they aren’t always wrong. Still, 2021 provides us with a mental reset and time to take a look at what has driven us to this point. It is a time to assess, organize, and create a future that we actually want.
Happy New Year from Outpost Zeta!
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