“The Internet is watching us now. If they
want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be
watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling
thing is, that will make us feel we’re part of the medium. The scary
thing is, we’ll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in
the air around us, talking directly to us.”
—Director Steven Spielberg, Minority
Report
By John W. Whitehead: We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future
dreamed up by such science fiction writers as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley,
Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick.
Much like Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984,
the government and its corporate spies now watch our every move.
Much like Huxley’s A Brave New
World, we are churning out a society of watchers who “have their
liberties taken away from them, but … rather enjoy it, because they [are]
distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing.”
Much like Atwood’s The
Handmaid’s Tale, the populace is now taught to “know their place and
their duties, to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected
up to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of themselves that they will
accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away.”
And in keeping with Philip K. Dick’s darkly
prophetic vision of a dystopian police state—which became the basis for Steven
Spielberg’s futuristic thriller Minority Report which was released 15
years ago—we are now trapped into a world in which the government is
all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line,
dark-clad police SWAT teams and pre-crime units will crack a few skulls to
bring the populace under control.
Minority Report is set in the year
2054, but it could just as well have taken place in 2017.
Seemingly taking its cue from science
fiction, technology has moved so fast in the short time since Minority
Report premiered in 2002 that what once seemed futuristic no longer
occupies the realm of science fiction.
Incredibly, as the various nascent
technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations
alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction
software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network
aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our
behavior, Spielberg’s unnerving vision of the future is fast becoming our
reality.
Both worlds—our
present-day reality and Spielberg’s celluloid vision of the future—are
characterized by widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies,
data mining, fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial
recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime)
aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage.
Surveillance cameras are everywhere.
Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails.
Political correctness—a philosophy that discourages diversity—has become a
guiding principle of modern society.
The courts have shredded the Fourth
Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In fact,
SWAT teams battering down doors without search warrants and FBI agents acting
as a secret police that investigate dissenting citizens are common occurrences
in contemporary America.
We are increasingly ruled by
multi-corporations wedded to the police state. Much of the population is either
hooked on illegal drugs or ones prescribed by doctors. And bodily privacy and
integrity has been utterly eviscerated by a prevailing view that Americans have
no rights over what happens to their bodies during an encounter with government
officials, who are allowed to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat
down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest
provocation.
All of this has come about with little more
than a whimper from a clueless American populace largely comprised of
nonreaders and television and internet zombies. But we have been warned about
such an ominous future in novels and movies for years.
The following 15 films may be the best
representation of what we now face as a society.
Fahrenheit 451 (1966). Adapted from
Ray Bradbury’s novel and directed by Francois Truffaut, this film depicts a
futuristic society in which books are banned, and firemen ironically are called
on to burn contraband books—451 Fahrenheit being the temperature at which books
burn. Montag is a fireman who develops a conscience and begins to question his
book burning. This film is an adept metaphor for our obsessively politically correct
society where virtually everyone now pre-censors speech. Here, a brainwashed
people addicted to television and drugs do little to resist governmental
oppressors.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The plot
of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, as based on an Arthur C. Clarke short story,
revolves around a space voyage to Jupiter. The astronauts soon learn, however,
that the fully automated ship is orchestrated by a computer system—known as HAL
9000—which has become an autonomous thinking being that will even murder to
retain control. The idea is that at some point in human evolution, technology
in the form of artificial intelligence will become autonomous and that human
beings will become mere appendages of technology. In fact, at present, we are
seeing this development with massive databases generated and controlled by the
government that are administered by such secretive agencies as the National
Security Agency and sweep all websites and other information devices collecting
information on average citizens. We are being watched from cradle to grave.
Planet of the Apes (1968). Based on
Pierre Boulle’s novel, astronauts crash on a planet where apes are the masters
and humans are treated as brutes and slaves. While fleeing from gorillas on
horseback, astronaut Taylor is shot in the throat, captured and housed in a
cage. From there, Taylor begins a journey wherein the truth revealed is that
the planet was once controlled by technologically advanced humans who destroyed
civilization. Taylor’s trek to the ominous Forbidden Zone reveals the startling
fact that he was on planet earth all along. Descending into a fit of rage at
what he sees in the final scene, Taylor screams: “We finally really did it. You
maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you.” The lesson is obvious here, but will we
listen? The script, although rewritten, was initially drafted by Rod Serling
and retains Serling’s Twilight Zone-ish ending.
THX 1138 (1970). George Lucas’
directorial debut, this is a somber view of a dehumanized society totally
controlled by a police state. The people are force-fed drugs to keep them
passive, and they no longer have names but only letter/number combinations such
as THX 1138. Any citizen who steps out of line is quickly brought into
compliance by robotic police equipped with “pain prods”—electro-shock batons.
Sound like tasers?
A Clockwork Orange (1971). Director
Stanley Kubrick presents a future ruled by sadistic punk gangs and a chaotic
government that cracks down on its citizens sporadically. Alex is a violent
punk who finds himself in the grinding, crushing wheels of injustice. This film
may accurately portray the future of western society that grinds to a halt as
oil supplies diminish, environmental crises increase, chaos rules, and the only
thing left is brute force.
Soylent Green (1973). Set in a
futuristic overpopulated New York City, the people depend on synthetic foods
manufactured by the Soylent Corporation. A policeman investigating a murder
discovers the grisly truth about what soylent green is really made of. The theme
is chaos where the world is ruled by ruthless corporations whose only goal is
greed and profit. Sound familiar?
Blade Runner (1982). In a 21st century
Los Angeles, a world-weary cop tracks down a handful of renegade “replicants”
(synthetically produced human slaves). Life is now dominated by
mega-corporations, and people sleepwalk along rain-drenched streets. This is a
world where human life is cheap, and where anyone can be exterminated at will
by the police (or blade runners). Based upon a Philip K. Dick novel, this
exquisite Ridley Scott film questions what it means to be human in an inhuman
world.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). The best
adaptation of Orwell’s dark tale, this film visualizes the total loss of
freedom in a world dominated by technology and its misuse, and the crushing
inhumanity of an omniscient state. The government controls the masses by
controlling their thoughts, altering history and changing the meaning of words.
Winston Smith is a doubter who turns to self-expression through his diary and
then begins questioning the ways and methods of Big Brother before being
re-educated in a most brutal fashion.
Brazil (1985). Sharing a similar
vision of the near future as 1984 and Franz Kafka’s novel The
Trial, this is arguably director Terry Gilliam’s best work, one replete with a
merging of the fantastic and stark reality. Here, a mother-dominated, hapless
clerk takes refuge in flights of fantasy to escape the ordinary drabness of
life. Caught within the chaotic tentacles of a police state, the longing for
more innocent, free times lies behind the vicious surface of this film.
They Live (1988). John Carpenter’s
bizarre sci-fi social satire action film assumes the future has already
arrived. John Nada is a homeless person who stumbles across a resistance
movement and finds a pair of sunglasses that enables him to see the real world
around him. What he discovers is a world controlled by ominous beings who
bombard the citizens with subliminal messages such as “obey” and “conform.”
Carpenter manages to make an effective political point about the
underclass—that is, everyone except those in power. The point: we, the
prisoners of our devices, are too busy sucking up the entertainment trivia
beamed into our brains and attacking each other up to start an effective
resistance movement.
The Matrix (1999). The story centers
on a computer programmer Thomas A. Anderson, secretly a hacker known by the
alias “Neo,” who begins a relentless quest to learn the meaning of “The
Matrix”—cryptic references that appear on his computer. Neo’s search leads him
to Morpheus who reveals the truth that the present reality is not what it seems
and that Anderson is actually living in the future—2199. Humanity is at war
against technology which has taken the form of intelligent beings, and Neo is
actually living in The Matrix, an illusionary world that appears to be set in
the present in order to keep the humans docile and under control. Neo soon
joins Morpheus and his cohorts in a rebellion against the machines that use
SWAT team tactics to keep things under control.
Minority Report (2002). Based on a
short story by Philip K. Dick and directed by Steven Spielberg, the setting is
2054 where PreCrime, a specialized police unit, apprehends criminals before
they can commit the crime. Captain Anderton is the chief of the Washington, DC,
PreCrime force which uses future visions generated by “pre-cogs” (mutated
humans with precognitive abilities) to stop murders. Soon Anderton becomes the
focus of an investigation when the precogs predict he will commit a murder. But
the system can be manipulated. This film raises the issue of the danger of
technology operating autonomously—which will happen eventually if it has not
already occurred. To a hammer, all the world looks like a nail. In the same way,
to a police state computer, we all look like suspects. In fact, before long, we
all may be mere extensions or appendages of the police state—all suspects in a
world commandeered by machines.
V for Vendetta (2006). This film
depicts a society ruled by a corrupt and totalitarian government where
everything is run by an abusive secret police. A vigilante named V dons a mask
and leads a rebellion against the state. The subtext here is that authoritarian
regimes through repression create their own enemies—that is, terrorists—forcing
government agents and terrorists into a recurring cycle of violence. And who is
caught in the middle? The citizens, of course. This film has a cult following
among various underground political groups such as Anonymous, whose members
wear the same Guy Fawkes mask as that worn by V.
Children of Men (2006). This film
portrays a futuristic world without hope since humankind has lost its ability
to procreate. Civilization has descended into chaos and is held together by a
military state and a government that attempts to keep its totalitarian
stronghold on the population. Most governments have collapsed, leaving Great
Britain as one of the few remaining intact societies. As a result, millions of
refugees seek asylum only to be rounded up and detained by the police. Suicide
is a viable option as a suicide kit called Quietus is promoted on billboards
and on television and newspapers. But hope for a new day comes when a woman
becomes inexplicably pregnant.
Land of the Blind (2006). This dark
political satire is based on several historical incidents in which tyrannical
rulers were overthrown by new leaders who proved just as evil as their
predecessors. Maximilian II is a demented fascist ruler of a troubled land
named Everycountry who has two main interests: tormenting his underlings and
running his country’s movie industry. Citizens who are perceived as questioning
the state are sent to “re-education camps” where the state’s concept of reality
is drummed into their heads. Joe, a prison guard, is emotionally moved by the
prisoner and renowned author Thorne and eventually joins a coup to remove the
sadistic Maximilian, replacing him with Thorne. But soon Joe finds himself the
target of the new government.
All of these films—and the writers who
inspired them—understood what many Americans, caught up in their partisan,
flag-waving, zombified states, are still struggling to come to terms with: that
there is no such thing as a government organized for the good of the people.
Even the best intentions among those in government inevitably give way to the
desire to maintain power and control at all costs.
Eventually, as I point out in my book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People, even the sleepwalking
masses (who remain convinced that all of the bad things happening in the police
state—the police shootings, the police beatings, the raids, the roadside strip
searches—are happening to other people) will have to wake up.
Sooner or later, the things happening to
other people will start happening to us and our loved ones.
When that painful reality sinks in, it will
hit with the force of a SWAT team crashing through your door, a taser being
aimed at your stomach, and a gun pointed at your head. And there will be no
channel to change, no reality to alter, and no manufactured farce to hide
behind.
As George Orwell warned, “If you want a
picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.”
Constitutional attorney and author John W.
Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute.
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