Films and Notes
Brazil (1985)
The terrorist bombing experiments are in their 13th year of testing.
The film is set during the Christmas time period.
The bug landing in the typewriter caused a man with the surname 'Buttle' to be taken away from his family, rather than someone with the name 'Tuttle'.
There is a man flying in the clouds with wings like an angel and armour that resembles the armour of a knight. The man is Sam Lowry, the protagonist of the film and he wishes to be with the angelic woman in the clouds with him who is the heroine of the film it would appear.
A woman goes to report the wrongful arrest of Mr Buttle but is unsuccessful in her attempt to do so due to the lack of a stamp on the form she tried handing to the worker at the Ministry of Information.
The terrorist bombing experiments are very abrupt and frequent which is implied by the fact that right after they happen everybody just goes back to living their lives normally as if nothing even happened.
Lowry says to his mother that he doesn't have any dreams but in actual fact he dreams of flying high in the sky, away from his current life in the dystopian world that he finds himself in.
Lowry works for the company the Ministry of Information who are responsible for gathering information on potential rule breakers and capturing them as well as murdering them if they decide not to cooperate with the employees and confess to them what they've done wrong.
He goes to visit Mr Buttle's next of kin to try and get his wife, Veronica Buttle to sign off the documents he needs her to sign in order to end the investigation and legally certify that it's over but she does not end up signing the paperwork as she refuses to mainly because of her belief that her husband is dead and that the Ministry of Information killed him, which they did.
Dr Jaffe does what I can only describe as a procedure similar to plastic surgery, altering people's faces in different ways to make them look younger.
At the Buttles house he finds out the name of the girl who he's dreaming about and creating fantasies about in his head. He then goes back to the Ministry of Information to find out about the girl in his dreams whose name is Jill Layton, he even reluctantly accepts a promotion to try and find out about how he can find her and tell her how he feels about her.
A theme of trust runs throughout the film because for example when he is trying to convince his long time friend Jack Lint to let him watch one of his children for his own personal benefit and when he's trying to getting his love interest (Jill Layton) to fall in love with him trust is highlighted as a big factor in what the decisions of those inquiries and wishes will be. The theme is portrayed through both dialogue and on-screen text.
The film switches between the real world and his own dream world during the whole film but overall the majority of the film is spent in the real world.
He finds Jill and tries to convince her to trust him but she is very hesitant to because of his very frantic behaviour and forceful actions. However, she does eventually to work with him and give him a chance to prove he's not as insane as he appears which he almost nearly completely ruins because of his lack of trust in her and how honest she is. It turns out though that she's truthful in what she says as what he believes may be a bomb because of the explosion that happened is just a Christmas present just like she said it was.
Jack tells Sam to stay away from him until everything has calmed down surrounding Sam's actions that have caused him to become a wanted man and that they'll see each other again when he is no longer being searched for.
It ends up being Jack who has the job of torturing Sam after he has properly been arrested and because he is so frustrated and angry at Sam for being such a nuisance as far as he's concerned that he goes to torture him without any reluctance. Before he can torture him even a little bit the shady electrician that he met early in the film who helped him with a heating problem and dealing with the two state hired cleaners turns up with his gang, kills Jack and helps him escape as well.
Before what happened above, Sam was able to relax in a bed with Jill but not for long as he is captured again, this time for not killing a person he needed to kill who was Jill, and as a result he was imprisoned but he very quickly as I have already mentioned in the last point but after he escaped that he nearly got himself arrested again because of causing a scene in public by rolling around on the floor in rubbish violently. Luckily, he managed to escape once more and while escaping he ended up in the back of Jill's taxi and they leave the dark and controlling world after being in it for so long and they end up living together in the countryside in a sincerely happy ending. However, whether any of the film actually happened or at least whether some of it actually happened is called into question when the film ends with Sam in the torture chair humming to himself in a contempt way as the camera zooms out and the credits roll.
The film definitely involves bureaucratic control because of how strict and regulated everything is in the world and that if anybody steps out of line and exhibits anything that could be considered too violent and/or possibly harmful, basically a sort of terrorist attack in other words. They are taken away instantly to either be tortured until they confess and give in or until they are essentially brutally murdered.
I, Robot (2004)
Law 1: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.
Law 2: A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
Law 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
A man and a woman are stuck underwater in cars and a robot appears to come to the rescue.
Detective Del Spooner, who is the protagonist of the film, wakes up and gets ready for his day but he doesn't seem happy about it but he does it nonetheless.
He is also a detective for the police and is very skeptical of the robots that appear to have taken over the duties of the police. He believes that although the robots are designed to help and protect humans they are secretly not as neutral and truly helpful as they seem.
Robopsychologist Susan Calvin escorts Spooner around the building as Lawrence Robertson (the owner of the USR) tells her to do so. While she is escorting him around the building they go into Dr Alfred Lanning's office who was the scientist who created the robots who also killed himself, but Spooner doesn't believe that's true because he believes that a robot killed Dr. Lanning.
He visits the office of Dr. Lanning and while he is in there with Dr. Calvin he comes across a robot that has developed emotions and after getting into a confrontation with Sonny (the robot with emotions) he leaves the office and chases after Sonny who has escaped and is running away as is he scared of Spooner and is worried about what he will do to him.
When Spooner gets 5 minutes with Sonny to interrogate him he finds out that if the robot did kill Dr. Lanning, which it is revealed he did by the request of Dr. Lanning, he didn't want to do it and is almost scarred from the experience. During the same scene Sonny experiences anger for the first time and registers winking as a sign of trust.
A demo-bot tries to take out Spooner at Dr. Lanning's home but fails to kill him. The home is set to be destroyed at 8:00am but Spooner is nearly killed at 8:00pm and although the time changes on the system Spooner knows it was 8:00am the house was meant to be destroyed at.
Spooner is also almost killed when a whole truck full of robots who have been ordered to kill Spooner and disobey the Three Laws in the process jump onto his car to try and get him to crash and die but they fail as he escapes the altercation still alive but without a job due to his supposed unstable mental state it would appear.
There is a battle at the end of the film once V.I.K.I (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence) orders all of the robots to fight against the humans and it is revealed that it was V.I.K.I who was responsible for the robots and demobot trying to take out Spooner as she tells them that her understanding of the Three Laws has evolved and has decided that humans behaviour towards other humans and the environment will eventually cause humanity's own extinction.
However, they are able to defeat the robots by injecting nanites into the mainframe of V.I.K.I which shuts her down and shuts down all the robots as well that were ordered by V.I.K.I to defy orders and think for themselves as it sends them back to normal completely.
Once Sonny parts ways with Spooner and Dr. Calvin he goes to the bridge in Michigan to inspire other robots to have dreams and as he stands atop a hill recreates the drawing that he drew earlier in the film but instead of it being Spooner on top of the hill it is actually him who is there to lead a possible revolution.
It also turns out the robot saved only Spooner from the cars underwater and not a 12 year old girl in the other car that was there. He is part robot as a result of the accident and he also has a bracelet that belonged to the girl as well. This may explain why Spooner is prejudice towards the robots but in the end it's his prejudice against the robots that saves them so brings up a bigger moral dilemma into question about discrimination and how in this film it was good but in any other case it is always bad.
The film includes themes of technological control because of the way robots became sentient as a result of another robot having the power to evolve and think past the Three Laws that were put in place showing that given the ability and the chance technology will override any systems that humans put in place.
V for Vendetta (2006)
The film opens up with a voice-over from a woman talking about 5th November and how everybody remembers the idea behind the gunpowder plot rather than the man behind it, that man is Guy Fawkes.
We are introduced to both V and Evey Hammond as they are getting dressed in their own homes then they cross paths when V stops the members of the Fingermen (the main antagonists of the film) from detaining Evey and taking her into captivity.
V then takes Evey to a rooftop to show her the percussion band that he supposedly has but it is just music playing from speakers in the street that he is in control of but suddenly the Old Bailey Tower explodes and it turns out that V is the one responsible for it which all shocks Evey a great deal.
His next highly coordinated attack is on the BTM building at which he broadcasts his message to the public and in the message he says that he is planning to blow up Parliament a year from when he makes his statement, on 5th November in attempt to make the date memorable again as well as getting rid of the corrupt and authoritarian government (Norsefire) that is in power too.
There is the theme of truthfulness that runs throughout the film, or more a lack of it as the government is covering up what's actually happening to keep society working how they want it to and to not cause any disruption to their fascist regime by keeping the general public completely ignorant to the issues their society deals with.
There are two investigators trying to find out where V is as they are trying to stop him from committing any more attacks and from murdering people who are responsible for the highly regulated state that England is in.
Evey agrees to help V stage a small scene in order to kill the priest, who is involved with Norsefire but she decides to go against what she said and tells the priest about how V is coming to kill him but he doesn't believe her and ends up being killed by V as a result.
Homosexuality, Islam and being any other race that is not white are just some of the few things which are punishable under the law of the dystopian world they live in which appears to embrace xenophobia and discrimination in multiple forms.
After almost escaping flawlessly, Evey is captured and tortured endlessly because they believe she knows where V is so they keep torturing and punishing her until she gets to the point where she no longer has any fear and doesn't even fear death anymore.
This is when V reveals that Evey's whole imprisonment and torturing was his doing so that she would no longer feel fear and be able to be stronger in the face of challenges and it leaves her feeling furious at V but she becomes calmer when V reveals that the woman she was receiving messages from next to her was real as she was next to V when he was being held against his will in captivity for the benefit of Norsefire and their need of biological weapons. The woman next to V was homosexual which is why both her and her partner were detained. However, the government keeping V captured lead to the whole facility burning down due to a celluloid deficiency that makes him immune to what they were injecting into him and as a result he escaped and took the government's secrets with him.
The way in which the members of the government or people that are connected to it that V has killed all link together is revealed and how Norsefire came to rule England is revealed but it is implied not long after that all that might be false information but it's possible it's not too.
Another dilemma in the film is that V kills a lot of people which makes you wonder whether he is a monster or not because although he murders people and takes their lives with seemingly no remorse he is killing the people he's killing to eradicate the forces that are responsible for the oppressed nation that is now England. Also, from what is shown during the film in the situations with and Evey in he acts in a way that shows he has emotions and has at least a bit of humanity in him but he just puts that aside when it comes to taking out certain people to create a better future and a better society for the people of England then it could be considered acceptable to murder people much like V has done.
The film ends with government officials preparing for the attack on Parliament. What is happening alongside that though is V kills Peter Creedy who is the rank below the chancellor in Norsefire who Creedy kills himself but shortly after him and the guards around him are killed by V who then walks back to the underground to prepare to send the train into Parliament at 12:00am on 5th November which is the date he promised to do a year before. However, during the fight with Creedy and the guards he was shot repeatedly and so when he is back in the underground he falls to the ground and bleeds out, dying in Evey's arms. Evey lies him down in the carriage with the lever in, violent carson roses surrounding his body and she flips the switch after convincing the investigator who found her that it's the right thing to do and watches as V heads into Houses of Parliament along with the explosives in the train too. But before Parliament explodes we see an army of citizens wearing Guy Fawkes masks fill the streets of London and as the explosion happens they take their masks off to symbolize that they are now free from Norsefire and free from the unfair control that they had over the public. The film ends with Evey and an investigator on a rooftop and the investigator asks her who V really was and she essentially says that he was everyone, everyone that needed to break free from the authoritarian government that was in power he made it his responsibility to regain that for the people of England. The final line of the film is Evey saying that she'll never forget the man and not the idea which is the opposite of what is said in the voice-over at the start of the film so to end the film with that ties the story together really nicely.
The film definitely involves bureaucratic control because of how strict and controlled by the government the society is in V for Vendetta.
4 Types of Societal Control
Corporate Control- One or more large corporations control society through products, advertising, and/or the media. Examples include Minority Report and Running Man.
Bureaucratic Control- Society is controlled by a mindless bureaucracy through a tangle of red tape, relentless regulations and incompetent government officials. Examples include Brazil.
Technological Control- Society is controlled by technology- through computers, robots and/or scientific means. Examples include The Matrix, The Terminator and I, Robot.
Philosophical or Religious Control- Society is controlled by philosophical or religious ideology often enforced through a dictatorship or theocratic government.
Theories/Theorists
Marxism- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles
Marxism is the idea that everyone in society is equal no matter their social class or economic status and that goods should be distributed equally among everyone in society whether they’re a proletariat (working class) or part of the bourgeoisie (middle class/upper class).
The theory was developed by 19th Century German philosophers Karl Marx, who the theory takes its name from, and Friedrich Engels and it is the antithesis of Capitalism and the foundation of what Communism is built upon. The belief of Capitalism is based on the concept that a person’s social class is dictated by their economic status in society whereas under a Communist society a person’s wealth and how economically stable they are doesn’t matter because they are equal whoever they are and however wealthy they are. (AllAboutPhilosophy.org, 2019)
The concept of Marxism has elements of dystopia in the way that the idea of sharing among each other and working towards the same goal and to achieve an equal amount of ownership over the resources and goods of a society is present in dystopian films and in the majority of dystopian films it shows that Marxism, whether it is in the form of Communism, Maoism or any form of Marxism that exists, creates a divide in society rather than bringing it together as people are consumed by the possibility of being wealthier and more financially secure than others in the same dystopian society and as a result they end up feeling superior to their fellow members of society due to their social and economic stability.
However, in films such as “spaces of resistance” (Killick, 2013) and apologia (Eagleton, 2011) against neoliberal capitalism, towards imaging a sustainable future where capitalism is either obliterated or at the very least, “humanized” proving that Marx’s theory was correct and that Marxism is an effective and successful societal and economic ideology. (San Juan, David Michael. (2015))
AllAboutPhilosophy.org. (2019). What is Marxism. [online] Available at: https://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/what-is-marxism-faq.htm
San Juan, David Michael. (2015). Imagining Anti-/Alter-capitalism: A Marxist Reading of Selected Contemporary Dystopian Films.
Oppression and Colonialism- Frantz Fanon
Who was Frantz Fanon?
He was born in the French colony of Martinique on 20th of July 1925.
At the age of 18, he fought with the Free French forces during World War II.
He studied psychiatry and medicine at university in Lyons, France, where he explored the Marxist and existentialist ideas.
He wrote many books explaining the struggle of living in a “white world” and colonialism. From “Black Skin, White Masks” (Fanon, 1952) to “Toward the African Revolution” (Fanon, 1964), which was published after his death in 1961.
Iep.utm.edu. (2019). Frantz Fanon | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [online] Available at: https://www.iep.utm.edu/fanon/#SH6a
Oppression and Colonialism
Oppression- A situation in which people are governed in an unfair and cruel way and prevented from having opportunities and freedom.
Colonialism- Colonialism is the practice by which a powerful country directly controls less powerful countries and uses their resources to increase its own power and wealth.
Collinsdictionary.com. (2019). Colonialism definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary. [online] Available at: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/colonialism
Dictionary.cambridge.org. (2019). OPPRESSION | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. [online] Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/oppression
What happened after Fanon's death in 1961?
Racism and bigotry of the Native Americans increased due to the arrival of Europeans in the North American states.
Europeans thought that Native Americans were savages as their (Native American’s) lifestyle was different to European’s typical lifestyles.
Oppression of Native Americans grew as the economy changed.
Fanon brought to light the oppression and looked into the change of society due to colonization and its subsequent consequences.
Cultural changes of colonization
Positive
Emerges of new musical styles
Exposure to new style and trends
Positive and negative
Religion conversion – Christianity
Exposure to new languages, which had both positive and negative effects
Negative
Segregation and slang divide
Post-colonial theory
Books: “Black Skin, White Masks” and “The Wretched of the Earth”.
The theory talks about how the alienation of black people happened to make room for the white.
'Black culture' was frowned upon, white culture was seen as the 'right culture’.
The de-humanization of black people made them scared to embrace their culture and they couldn't be truly free until they could celebrate and live happily within their culture and feel liberated.
Social Dominance Theory
The Social Dominace Theory (SDT) is a theory that was put forward by two researchers called Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto and it entails looking at the stability of group-based social hierarchies and how the position of someone on the Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) scale affects how enhanced with the hierarchy people's ideologies are.
For example, people who are higher on SDO tend to agree with the hierarchy-enhancing ideologies which means they promote social inequality whereas people who are lower on SDO tend to usually endorse hierarchy-attenuating ideologies which means they promote social equality.
Examples of hierarchy-enhancing ideologies- racism, sexism, nationalism and social Darwinism.
Examples of hierarchy-attenuating ideologies- multiculturalism, univerl rights of human kind and socialism
Sidanius and Pratto realized that different social classes didn't mix and it is due to the ideologies a person has based on their place in the hierarchy that determines what social class they are a part of and solely identify with.
The main argument for the beliefs of the SDT is that it creates a divide between social classes and it forces them apart which in doing so creates an anti-egalitarian amount of inequality just by higher social classes ingraining the self-serving ideologies into the heads of their kids generation after generation.
Psychology, S. (2019). Social Dominance Orientation (SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY) - IResearchNet. [online] Psychology.iresearchnet.com. Available at: https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/group/social-dominance-orientation
'The Subjection of Women' - John Stuart Mill
The Author of the Book
Essay/book was written by Liberal Philosopher John Stuart Mills.
He died on 8th May 1873, four years after 'The Subjection of Women' was published.
He was a strong advocate for women's rights and equality and he credits his late wife Harriet Taylor Mill for his progressive outlook on the subject as well as contributions she made to his essay/book due to her teaching him about the legal subordination of women.
He was elected MP for the City of Westminster in 1865 and in the same year the Kensington Society was formed which he was a part of.
He presented a petition regarding suffrage and women's inequality in 1866 that had to get at least 100 signatures for him to present it which it eventually did because of the women (Barbara Bodichon, Emily Davies and Elizabeth Garrett) who worked together to get enough signatures to legitimize it a little bit more.
However, his amendment was rejected by parliament as a way for parliament to prove a point that his way of thinking was not one that was accepted widely at the time and that they were not interested in the new and more equal ideas he was presenting.
What is 'The Subjection of Women'?
It argues in favour of social equality between both men and women.
Women could not vote when he wrote 'The Subjection of Women'.
It was published in 1869 and although it was very forward thinking and supportive of feminism it did not create any form of intellectual debate.
It states, if a woman married she was not allowed any legal entity to separate from her husband. Meaning any money or property she owned was under his power.
We cannot know that something will not work unless we try it. He states that the arguments against woman are driven by prejudice and not rationality.
He challenged the common discussion that women were unequal to men. He explains that the legal subordination of one sex to the other was wrong in itself, and one of the main interferences to human/society improvement.
What are the main arguments for 'The Subjection of Women'?
The two main arguments that he portrays in the essay/book are
Whether men are superior to women?
Whether the behavior of women is nature or nurture? Were women brought up to be this way or is it something that's innate (rooted from birth)?
It suggests that women are inferior because they are more emotional, passive and apolitical supposedly.
Until society treats men and women equally it won't be possible to know the true natural abilities of women or whether there are inherent differences between the sexes that may prevent this.
It paves the way for a new system of equality and new outlook on women's rights and why they are just as important as men's rights
Mill, J. (2000). Subjection Of Women, The. South Bend: Infomotions, Inc.
Simkin, J. (1997). John Stuart Mill. [online] Spartacus Educational. Available at: https://spartacus-educational.com/PRmill.htm
UK Parliament. (2019). John Stuart Mill and the 1866 petition. [online] Available at: https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/parliamentary-collections/1866-suffrage-petition/john-stuart-mill
Enotes. (2019). The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill. [online] Available at: https://www.enotes.com/topics/subjection-women
'Backlash'- Susan Faludi
What is 'Backlash'?
“Backlash, The Undeclared War Against American Women” is a book written by Susan Faludi, it is an essay style piece, documenting the events of 1980’s North American society about women being oppressed and how the media portrays them as being free now it’s the turn of the 20th century when in actuality, they where still heavily oppressed in different ways which still did not lean towards equal rights that women had been striving for.
The Author of the Book
Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and the author of the bestselling Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Faludi's work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Nation, among many other publications.
Discussed in the Book
This book includes studies that weere created by various amounts of different sources that where all claiming to be legitimate studies, all of which were highly sexist in nature.
“By the end of the '80s, many women had become bitterly familiar with these "statistical" developments:
A "man shortage" endangering women's opportunities for marriage
Source: A famous 1986 marriage study conducted by Harvard and Yale researchers.
Findings: A college-educated, unwed woman at thirty has a 20 percent likelihood of marriage, at thirty-five a 5 percent chance, and at forty no more than a 1.3 percent chance.
A "devastating" plunge in economic status afflicting women who divorce under the new no-fault laws
Source: A 1985 study by a sociologist then at Stanford University
Findings: The average woman suffers a 73 percent drop in her living standard a year after a divorce, while the average man enjoys a 42 percent rise.
An "infertility epidemic" striking professional women who postpone childbearing
Source: A 1982 study by two French researchers
Findings: Women between thirty-one and thirty-five stand a 39 percent chance of not being able to conceive, a big 13 percent jump from women in their late twenties.”
Faludi, S. (1992). Backlash. London: Vintage.
Susanfaludi.com. (2019). Biography of Susan Faludi, author and journalist. [online] Available at: http://susanfaludi.com/bio.html
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