The Case for Remaking Demolition Man
Oct. 27th, 2017 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastThere's a point about this movie that I wasn't aware of until it was pointed out in the comments of my deconstruction of Brave New World. Namely, Demolition Man puts an action-adventure movie into a society that approximates that of Brave New World. That's the quick premise and you can see how that's worth a story. Take an old, action-adventure shoot-em-up and transplant the characters into such a society and look at how they'll both react.
It would... be better if the movie didn't make the same mistake as Huxley, himself.
For those who haven't seen it, Demolition Man is the story of John Spartan (because some people choose not to use subtlety and some never figured it out in the first place), a classic "tough-as-nails" action adventure cop in gritty, all-out-war-on-crime Los Angelas. During a thrilling scene, John Spartan captures and arrests Simon Phoenix. In the effort, Spartan is tricked, by Phoenix, into killing hostages.
Simon Phoenix, with all the credibility he has as a known, hardened criminal, accuses the decorated police officer, John Spartan, of killing the hostages on purpose. This... is... apparently enough for a conviction.
Because, this is the not-too-distant-future of 1996 (the movie was released in 1993), there's an experimental rehabilitation method. Rather than putting someone in prison for forty years, they can put someone in cryogenic suspended animation for forty years. During that time, using subliminal methods, the prisoner can be taught skills and otherwise conditioned so that, when they come out, they are rehabilitated, and have skills appropriate the economy where they come out.
For reasons initially unknown, Simon Phoenix comes out of cryogenic suspension four years early. Being the wild criminal that he is, he immediately sets to killing people and getting away with it without even a token effort at lying to the police. In order to deal with this monster from the past, now San Angeles takes John Sparton out of suspension and puts him back in the police force.
What happens is one part action-adventure, one part fish out of water comedy, and all set in... Well... I checked IMDB for recent reviews. One titled it a "Scathing Satire of Progressivism"... That same review refers to some of the robed citizens of 2032 as "robed eunuchs" and refers to the society as a "castrates' paradise". And, that gets to the big problem I have with Demolition Man as we have it.
What we're shown is very much like Brave New World, so, I guess... mission accomplished. But, like Huxley before it, it seems to make the mistake of thinking of the problems it identifies in its fiction as something new... something liberal.
The society in the movie has a lot of rules that are new and/or foreign to John Sparton. There are machines that dispense fines for using curse words. Salt is illegal. Direct, physical sex is illegal. Meat is illegal. All of this done in the name of what's best for you. You're not allowed to indulge in habits that are harmful to yourself.
If you put yourself in a special part of the 90s, you can understand where this is coming from. "PC" had become a word in everybody's lexicon just a few years prior. In fact, Hillary Clinton was attempting healthcare reform in the same year Demolition Man was released. Environmentalism was becoming more fashionable.
From a certain perspective, liberals were trying to control your life. That, in fact, was the standard wisdom coming from Republicans and conservatives. Liberals wanted the government sticking its nose in your business. What you could eat, what words you could say, how you disciplined your children, etc.
It wasn't true. But, in an example of situational irony, it was repeated so often that, if didn't identify with liberalism and fight against the stereotype, you could mistake it for your own thoughts. I identified as somewhat liberal, back then, but resisted going too far in certain topics so as to be able to claim that I was a "reasonable liberal, not like those extremists."
If you didn't take the time and actively resist the conditioning, it was easy to just go along with it. It was everywhere.
When trying to write a liberal utopia in order to satirize its goals and values, it's incredibly easy to, without thinking much on the details, just assume that you know what those goals and values are. So, you write about a world where everybody's so non-violent and inoffensive and non-threatening that it's a either a joke or threatening in itself. You craft a world that's utterly incapable of dealing with the dangerous people your "real world" has to handle on a regular basis.
And, on top of all of that, you ad in Edgar Friendly.
Edgar Friendly is a sign of just how ill-thought-out this "scathing satire of progressivism" is. Edgar Friendly is the leader of a resistance group that lives in the sewer. They don't fit into the brave liberal world. Dennis Leary gives a rant about how he wants to be free to... do something in a Dennis Leary rant. By vague memory, I think it involves going around naked because he feels like it.
But, why else might someone not fit in? Well, the society may seem less "manly", but the movie never discusses something like... oh... homosexuality. This movie was made in the 90s and Trans Rights is far more of a hot-button issue today, but you can tell that's a topic that this movie wouldn't have thought to bring up. Other topics not discussed include racism, religious bigotry, and other matters that have, historically, put someone in a position of being, metaphorically, in the sewer.
It's easy to think of all these words you can't say anymore, these fun costumes you're not allowed to wear anymore, all these new sensitivities that never used to be a thing and think that your freedom is being curtailed. The reality is that you were engaging in some behaviors that made other people less free, and you're being asked not to do that.
Less free to openly exist without fear of physical assault. Less free to openly exist without losing job opportunities or housing. Less free to merely be and not be arrested or shot on suspicion of things you'd never think to do in the first place.
All of this goes to answer a question I might get if I had a large readership. "Why make it political?" The answer is that is politcal. It's political all throughout. It's just that it doesn't really understand the politics it statirizes.
Still, there's a great frame to work with. Spartan, the "tough as nails", grim and gritty police officer on one side and his opponent on the other. A world that seems cleaner, healthier, and at the same time more oddly restrictive, in a way that one, if one has a common view of liberalism, could think of as liberal. Even a leader character given nigh-worshipful reverence.
In the fix, we start the movie with taking John Spartan out of cryogenic suspension. John Spartan, much like in the movie we have, has been taken out of suspension early, in order to handle a threat from someone else who was taken from cryogenic suspension. The someone else is someone John Spartan has dealt with many a time before. Simon Phoenix has caused property damage and death and has shown himself to be a threat to the whole of the city. It's up to John Spartan to address the threat.
What follows is a mixture of John Spartan discussing the modus oparandi of Simon Pheonix and the fish-out-of-water introduction of John Spartan to the new society.
Much like the movie we have, John Spartan is confused and offended by this society. The music is primarily radio-jingles. The language is literally policed. And, when he goes to the movies, he finds that there's neither violent nor sexual content, but bland morality tales. It's inoffensive to a degree that is offensive.
To his thinking, this is all where things were headed when he was frozen. First, you can't offend this group, then you can't offend that group, then this third unknown group is demanding that you make a safe space so they never hear that people don't like them. It's all as much the inevitable result of liberalism as is the need for someone like himself to save the liberal utopia from someone who isn't as nice as they are.
Then, we have the first confrontation with Simon Phoenix. Our Simon Phoenix will have to be different from the existing. This Simon Phoenix isn't a spree-killer who just enjoys doing death and violence around. He's left-wing revolutionary. That enables a bit of the standard action-movie back-and-forth during a tense game of cat and mouse.
In the next confrontation, Spartan will follow Pheonix into the sewers and find himself in a community of those who don't fit in.
I'm not going to say that "liberal" automatically equals "better". But, the world of liberal perfection is a world where you can be any number of demographics without having to pay a social or legal price just for existing. Compared to people for whom the perfect world is, without saying it openly, those demographics that offend with their existence are done away with.
Who's going to make the more restrictive world that rejects the right to offend?
It would... be better if the movie didn't make the same mistake as Huxley, himself.
For those who haven't seen it, Demolition Man is the story of John Spartan (because some people choose not to use subtlety and some never figured it out in the first place), a classic "tough-as-nails" action adventure cop in gritty, all-out-war-on-crime Los Angelas. During a thrilling scene, John Spartan captures and arrests Simon Phoenix. In the effort, Spartan is tricked, by Phoenix, into killing hostages.
Simon Phoenix, with all the credibility he has as a known, hardened criminal, accuses the decorated police officer, John Spartan, of killing the hostages on purpose. This... is... apparently enough for a conviction.
Because, this is the not-too-distant-future of 1996 (the movie was released in 1993), there's an experimental rehabilitation method. Rather than putting someone in prison for forty years, they can put someone in cryogenic suspended animation for forty years. During that time, using subliminal methods, the prisoner can be taught skills and otherwise conditioned so that, when they come out, they are rehabilitated, and have skills appropriate the economy where they come out.
For reasons initially unknown, Simon Phoenix comes out of cryogenic suspension four years early. Being the wild criminal that he is, he immediately sets to killing people and getting away with it without even a token effort at lying to the police. In order to deal with this monster from the past, now San Angeles takes John Sparton out of suspension and puts him back in the police force.
What happens is one part action-adventure, one part fish out of water comedy, and all set in... Well... I checked IMDB for recent reviews. One titled it a "Scathing Satire of Progressivism"... That same review refers to some of the robed citizens of 2032 as "robed eunuchs" and refers to the society as a "castrates' paradise". And, that gets to the big problem I have with Demolition Man as we have it.
What we're shown is very much like Brave New World, so, I guess... mission accomplished. But, like Huxley before it, it seems to make the mistake of thinking of the problems it identifies in its fiction as something new... something liberal.
The society in the movie has a lot of rules that are new and/or foreign to John Sparton. There are machines that dispense fines for using curse words. Salt is illegal. Direct, physical sex is illegal. Meat is illegal. All of this done in the name of what's best for you. You're not allowed to indulge in habits that are harmful to yourself.
If you put yourself in a special part of the 90s, you can understand where this is coming from. "PC" had become a word in everybody's lexicon just a few years prior. In fact, Hillary Clinton was attempting healthcare reform in the same year Demolition Man was released. Environmentalism was becoming more fashionable.
From a certain perspective, liberals were trying to control your life. That, in fact, was the standard wisdom coming from Republicans and conservatives. Liberals wanted the government sticking its nose in your business. What you could eat, what words you could say, how you disciplined your children, etc.
It wasn't true. But, in an example of situational irony, it was repeated so often that, if didn't identify with liberalism and fight against the stereotype, you could mistake it for your own thoughts. I identified as somewhat liberal, back then, but resisted going too far in certain topics so as to be able to claim that I was a "reasonable liberal, not like those extremists."
If you didn't take the time and actively resist the conditioning, it was easy to just go along with it. It was everywhere.
When trying to write a liberal utopia in order to satirize its goals and values, it's incredibly easy to, without thinking much on the details, just assume that you know what those goals and values are. So, you write about a world where everybody's so non-violent and inoffensive and non-threatening that it's a either a joke or threatening in itself. You craft a world that's utterly incapable of dealing with the dangerous people your "real world" has to handle on a regular basis.
And, on top of all of that, you ad in Edgar Friendly.
Edgar Friendly is a sign of just how ill-thought-out this "scathing satire of progressivism" is. Edgar Friendly is the leader of a resistance group that lives in the sewer. They don't fit into the brave liberal world. Dennis Leary gives a rant about how he wants to be free to... do something in a Dennis Leary rant. By vague memory, I think it involves going around naked because he feels like it.
But, why else might someone not fit in? Well, the society may seem less "manly", but the movie never discusses something like... oh... homosexuality. This movie was made in the 90s and Trans Rights is far more of a hot-button issue today, but you can tell that's a topic that this movie wouldn't have thought to bring up. Other topics not discussed include racism, religious bigotry, and other matters that have, historically, put someone in a position of being, metaphorically, in the sewer.
It's easy to think of all these words you can't say anymore, these fun costumes you're not allowed to wear anymore, all these new sensitivities that never used to be a thing and think that your freedom is being curtailed. The reality is that you were engaging in some behaviors that made other people less free, and you're being asked not to do that.
Less free to openly exist without fear of physical assault. Less free to openly exist without losing job opportunities or housing. Less free to merely be and not be arrested or shot on suspicion of things you'd never think to do in the first place.
All of this goes to answer a question I might get if I had a large readership. "Why make it political?" The answer is that is politcal. It's political all throughout. It's just that it doesn't really understand the politics it statirizes.
Still, there's a great frame to work with. Spartan, the "tough as nails", grim and gritty police officer on one side and his opponent on the other. A world that seems cleaner, healthier, and at the same time more oddly restrictive, in a way that one, if one has a common view of liberalism, could think of as liberal. Even a leader character given nigh-worshipful reverence.
In the fix, we start the movie with taking John Spartan out of cryogenic suspension. John Spartan, much like in the movie we have, has been taken out of suspension early, in order to handle a threat from someone else who was taken from cryogenic suspension. The someone else is someone John Spartan has dealt with many a time before. Simon Phoenix has caused property damage and death and has shown himself to be a threat to the whole of the city. It's up to John Spartan to address the threat.
What follows is a mixture of John Spartan discussing the modus oparandi of Simon Pheonix and the fish-out-of-water introduction of John Spartan to the new society.
Much like the movie we have, John Spartan is confused and offended by this society. The music is primarily radio-jingles. The language is literally policed. And, when he goes to the movies, he finds that there's neither violent nor sexual content, but bland morality tales. It's inoffensive to a degree that is offensive.
To his thinking, this is all where things were headed when he was frozen. First, you can't offend this group, then you can't offend that group, then this third unknown group is demanding that you make a safe space so they never hear that people don't like them. It's all as much the inevitable result of liberalism as is the need for someone like himself to save the liberal utopia from someone who isn't as nice as they are.
Then, we have the first confrontation with Simon Phoenix. Our Simon Phoenix will have to be different from the existing. This Simon Phoenix isn't a spree-killer who just enjoys doing death and violence around. He's left-wing revolutionary. That enables a bit of the standard action-movie back-and-forth during a tense game of cat and mouse.
Spartan: I'm not really surprised, you know, that you hate it here.
Phoenix: Of course I hate it here!
Spartan: I always knew that, if you got your way, you'd hate it just as much as I would.
Phoenix: What?
Spartan: You and your constant fights to make everybody be nicer. You got your left-wing utopia and look at it.
Phoenix: You think this is a left-wing creation? Spartan, this is LA, have you met a gay guy since you woke up? How about a Jew? How about somebody identifying as a religion other than Christian? Any interracial couples? Many people of color at all?
In the next confrontation, Spartan will follow Pheonix into the sewers and find himself in a community of those who don't fit in.
Spartan: What do they want?
Phoenix: They want to not have to constantly justify their very existence. They want to be able to breathe and just be.
Spartan: Come on, that's what we all want.
Phoenix: It's what we wanted and what you didn't want us to have when we called it a "safe space". You objected, because it got in the way of your safe space being everywhere. And, you won.
Phoenix: What's happening up there isn't what happens when liberals control everything. What's happening up there is what happens when you save the world from liberals.
I'm not going to say that "liberal" automatically equals "better". But, the world of liberal perfection is a world where you can be any number of demographics without having to pay a social or legal price just for existing. Compared to people for whom the perfect world is, without saying it openly, those demographics that offend with their existence are done away with.
Who's going to make the more restrictive world that rejects the right to offend?
no subject
Date: 2017-10-28 02:23 am (UTC)And yes, if you look under the hood, the actual Demolition Man isn't about a liberal utopia--it's an authoritarian "purity" culture. No sex, no swearing, no doing anything that isn't officially approved. "What isn't good for you is bad, hence forbidden." I always thought Edgar Friendly was the real liberal. And yes, I did notice that there were very few non-white people in San Angeles, whereas the Underground was full of PoCs.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-28 11:44 am (UTC)"Do you think this there's a free market full of competition and only Taco Bell exists?"
no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 02:49 am (UTC)Notice that the restaurant monopoly is serving (instant, reconstituted) [1] hors d'oeuvres as full meals, presumably at fancy restaurant full meal prices, and the customers accept it, and seem convinced it's the fashionable thing to do? Skillful marketing, plus knowing that there's no real alternative?
---
[1] We know they are some kind of reconstituted fast-food meal thing, because Ed Friendly's food raid is carrying off little packets of "food" that were on the supply truck. Not boxes of meat and fresh produce like you would see in a real restaurant's supply truck.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 03:06 am (UTC)Unless, of course, there's some collusion between Taco Bell and the rulers of the society, a level of corruption that makes them identify the Taco Bell reconstituted food packets as "good for you" and labeling unprocessed food "not good for you".
no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 03:08 am (UTC)One thing I didn't get into was Lenina Huxley's nostalgia for the action and toughness of Sparton's time. That could still be there, along with the viewing of Sparton as a barbarian, while failing to acknowledge that they're really the logical conclusion of his politics.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-10-29 03:11 am (UTC)