Speed as an allegory for Capitalism
December 27th, 2009 at 00:35

Last night, I watched the seminal action-thriller film Speed, starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, and some other famous people. Obviously this isn’t the most cerebral thing that I could have watched – Hamlet was on today. But it did make me think – given the millions and millions of hours academics waste studying Shakespeare and reading too much into it, I think they’ve missed something. If only they’d stopped examining Hamlet from a post-modernist perspective, and had instead looked at Speed, they would have spotted the most obvious commentary on modern capitalism I’ve ever seen.

Think about it – the bus being unable to stop is a comment on capitalism’s need to constantly move forward and grow, and the jeopardy of the bus exploding is a metaphor for if the capitalist system slows down, the world economy will explode – taking many innocent civilians with it. No one being able to get off the bus is just like how it’s impossible for anyone – or any one country – to opt out of global markets and the capitalist system – because of the hold capitalism has upon everyone, whether they like it or not. Anyone who does try to escape – like one of the passengers – will just get destroyed for trying, not through the fault of the other participants in capitalism (the other passengers), but by the structure of the system itself.

Reeves’ saying “The bomb is big enough to blow a hole in THE WORLD” is not the clunkiest line in cinema history – far from it – it’s actually remarkably prescient, and is actually a commentary about the importance of capitalism in world society. If we were to lose capitalism overnight, society would break down.

The gap in the road that the bus has to jump is a metaphor for the occasional crisis that capitalism faces – and the extraordinary steps that are required to get past it (like bank bailouts).

The villain, an ex-cop out to make money is an allegory for the profit driven nature of the capitalist system – and the corrupting influence of money. The good guys in the film are the governments of the world – trying to correct the inadequacies of the free market and counter-balance the unfettered profit-driven motives of private industry.

And of course, Keanu Reeves’ wooden acting is an allegory for the destruction of trees and other natural resources in pursuit of consumption and the bus never stopping.

Look out for my thesis, Pop Quiz Hotshot: Speed, Society and Capitalism, in the new year…

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The Simpsons Movie
July 25th, 2007 at 22:39

I went to see The Simpsons Movie with Katy today. When I first heard they were making it a couple of years ago, I approached it with a similar level of caution as I did Die Hard 4, but as time grew closer to release day, having seen the trailers and so on, I set my expectations ludicrously high – it was apparently written by some of the earlier writers after all. They were mostly met.

It was 84 minutes long but didn’t feel like it was long enough – there were a number of plot lines that felt unresolved, such as Abe Simpson experiencing the “prophecy” in church (I’d have liked a pseudo-scientific explanation rather than the assumed supernatural one), and I got the impression that the ‘Lisa has a boyfriend’ sub-plot could have been explored in more depth – as could ‘Bart prefers Flanders to Homer’. These latter two would make excellent stand alone episodes of the series but they felt underused in the film. I wonder if Lisa’s boyfriend will pop up in the series now? And Homer’s pig for that matter – they didn’t resolve that either.

As I’m a big Simpsons nerd, here are some minor quibbles with an otherwise decent film:

President Schwarzenegger (not Wolfcastle) – previously the Simpsons has always claimed that the current real President was President, and would retcon the timeline appropriately – or perhaps more accurately, exist on a floating timeline. A fictional President is most definitely a break from the norm.

They also appeared to be retconning Homer and Marge’s marriage – Homer and Marge’s wedding video features at one point, yet it doesn’t look how it did in the series. The first time they got married in a casino – but Marge actually divorced Homer in one episode and they remarried in their own home. So I’m not sure where this wedding video came from, but then again, continuity has never been the Simpson’s strong point. Jon Stewart on the Daily Show when he had Matt Groening on mentioned that Homer is supposed to be 38… and he met Marge in high school, but Bart is only 10.

(Obsessive compulsive) fans will also know that the layout of Springfield regularly changes to suit the plot, but there was a truly atrocious example of bad continuity when early in the film it shows the Church and Moe’s being next door to each other, when only a few minutes later it is shown to be on the edge of the area covered by the Dome the EPA lower on to Springfield… and Moe’s has vanished.

It was a really good film though – tonnes of excellent gags. To name one, the blackboard gag at the start: “I will not illegally download this movie”.

I would: recommend it. Even if you are lining Rupert Murdoch’s pockets.

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