My movie like that was Elf. I avoided and avoided. I told my BFF how much I hated embarrassment comedies. I was so sure I would hate it and I loved it-- it was totally my brand of sweet and sentimental, and did not make me want to crawl under the table in second hand embarrassment for Will Ferrell!

I'm not going off anything but the trailer itself, placed within the context of the other stories that are told these days about technology. I mean, you're right about how, within the movie, this is a story about class conflict. But what are the images that people see telling them, on a visceral level? In terms of who we're supposed to have sympathy with, and consider in the right?

High tech, clean, healthy, leisure time, affluent - BAD

Dirty, low-tech, sick, overworked - GOOD

And again, the safe way to bet on the end of the movie is that instead of everyone gaining the benefits of affluence, which is surely what you'd want in the real world, the Elysites will be dragged down to the least common denominator, and this will be portrayed as A Good Thing.

And yet I looked at the trailer and thought that being dirty, low-tech, sick and overworked was bad, and they are desperately fighting to get out of it. That's what makes horse races, I suppose. You see the hero struggling to bring the healthy down, I see him struggling to better his own condition, probably because of an inciting incidence of misery.

I'll tell you how it turns out. Looks like a movie I would enjoy.

chris,

I think I'm not understanding what problem you have with the trailer and the larger message you believe the trailer/movie is imparting.

I'm obviously failing to communicate, yeah. (Not sarcasm)

Within the context of the story, ita ! is almost certainly correct. But that is the story being told. What I'm talking about are the images that make up the movie, and what visual shorthand it uses to indicate the alignment of the people on the screen at a given moment.

Specifically, if a group of people appear and they are: clean, healthy, well-dressed, associated with high-technology, they will, in this movie, almost certainly be THE BAD GUYS. Similarly, if a group is shabby, dirty, sick, low-tech, the viewers will expect them to be THE GOOD GUYS. It's the association of technology level with moral status that I'm finding offensive.

(Hey, queer/feminist theory people, or media studies people - is there a term for that? For the gap between the story as told in context and the visceral impact of the images or the words as they are perceived?)

And then there's the question of how the conflict will be resolved. Obviously I don't know for sure, but based on the context of the rest of the entertain-o-sphere, I'm not hopeful for anything other than more Luddism.

I should probably reiterate: the trailer itself is just a last straw deal. Most of this is the Oh Not This Shit Again venting that comes from seeing one too many kidnapped girlfriends, or your overused trope of choice.

chris,

okay, I understand your point, but I suppose I don't understand your objection. It is typical and stereotypical for the poor to be portrayed as dirty & unwashed and wealthy to be portrayed as clean and more advanced. Rather than see this as a good/evil dichotomy, I thought was was being portrayed as a class struggle dichotomy - of which resources are a part. Difficult to have equal technology and resources in a class struggle tale. Class is about resources.

My reaction upon seeing the trailer is that it seemed like "The Running Man" and King's critiques in the novel (as opposed to the movie) about an increasingly stratified society in which wealth seems to be connected to healthcare, safety in employment, and ability to live free of pollution.

Given that King's themes in the book are reality, not only in the U.S. but in other nations as well, I don't really see much controversy in the film trailer. I don't think there is Luddite (and proposed lack of technology) advocacy in the movie. Damon's character has a machine strapped to his body after all. Yes, his working conditions are atrocious, but I thought it was because of societal deprivation, not a fear of technology.

Well, yeah. There's nothing in the trailer that says the people in the world of the movie make moral judgments based on tech level; the dirtsiders' opinion of Elysium tech may just be, "damn, I want some of that."

I'm talking about the visceral impact of the imagery of the movie on the viewer in this world, at a lower level than what the story being told is. If the visual language of the piece is, when you see high-tech you think BAD GUY, when you see low-tech you think GOOD GUY, what is the subtext of that association?

Woman finds new uses for Uruk-hai scimitar: [link]

Too awesome.

Definitely awesome.

chris, I see your point, but I'm having a hard time tying it to a broader social context, which seems to be where your objection lies, if I'm reading you right. I don't feel like this movie (or other movies/TV shows/books/whatever) is making the argument that advanced technology is bad, or that people who use it are bad, or less noble than people who don't. It seems pretty clearly to be a statement on wealth and privilege, not advanced technology, both within the context of the story and within the context of our own society.

You said:

How dare we want to be happy? How dare we want to be healthy?

But what I'm seeing, in both the story being told and the visceral images being shown, is more along the lines of: "How dare we want to be wealthy? How dare we want to exclude others from our perfect world?"