Continuing a series of somewhat light blogs, I have a few
things to say about the 2012 movie Total
Recall, a reimagining of the 1990 film of the same name, itself based on the
Philip K. Dick story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.”
The basic premise of the movie is that memories can be
artificially inserted into the human mind. Douglas Quaid (played by Colin
Farrell) goes to a company named Rekall to spice up his humdrum existence as a
common factory worker by gaining memories of being a double agent. Something
goes wrong, however, and he finds himself caught in the center of a struggle
between the only two inhabitable places left on Earth after chemical welfare
has ravaged the planet: the United Federation of Britain (UFB) and the Colony
(Australia).
Most of what I heard about the film when it came out was
negative, but I can’t see what’s wrong with it. Sure it’s pulp, but it’s pulp
done well. What stood out most to me--besides the hilarious and brutal crotch smack
Kate Beckinsale delivers to Colin Farrell’s face (video)--is the socio-political drama.
It’s a cliché one, to be sure. The richer UFB exploits the
poor Colony for cheap labor, and the UFB’s chancellor colludes with a
manufacturer of robotic soldiers for a full-scale invasion of the Colony. Class
warfare coupled with a military-industrial complex--an old story we are familiar
with in works of fiction since at least World War II.
What amazes me is that while anyone saturated in Hollywood can
easily identify the villainous forces in these movies, a great number of those
same people leap to the defense of the government, the military, and giant corporations
when they behave similarly in real life, and they are eager to attack those who
resist those forces.
We are all familiar with the scene at the end of the movie
when a document or video or voice-recording is uploaded to the internet, broadcast
on television, or simply revealed to a room full of people, providing proof of
the dastardly deeds of those in power and setting off a firestorm among the
people. The movie usually ends there, with the certainty that the mighty and corrupt
will fall and justice will be served. Audiences of all stripes are moved by this.
In real life, however, the people can barely stir themselves
off the couch even when provided with hundreds of thousands of pieces of damning
evidence--such as through WikiLeaks. We now live in an age when everyone knows
that the military-industrial complex exists, that corporations buy votes in
Congress, that the government is spying on us, that our leaders take us to war
on false pretenses, that we hold innocent men prisoner and torture them for
years without trial or even pressing charges, and that our soldiers gun down
civilians. None of that is a radical accusation--everyone knows these things
are fact.
When it comes to the NSA scandal, no one questions the
authenticity of the documents leaked by Tony Snowden, no one questions the veracity
of Glenn Greenwald’s reporting for the The Guardian. Yet many Americans think
Snowden did the wrong thing in blowing the whistle. We all know our government
is committing the crime, but some look for excuses to sweep it under the rug.
I suppose I shouldn’t be amazed at this. Psychoanalysis
would suggest that repression is at work. Toward the end of Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud
touches upon what he calls the cultural superego--prevailing mores in
civilization. America’s cultural superego insists that America the Beautiful
does not do such things as unleash airstrikes on Reuters reporters, yet we all
know it does. Threatened, some egos cave, and the truth is squelched.
The objection will immediately be raised that fiction and
reality are two separate things. I agree. Only the crimes committed in reality
are often much worse--and all too often we care less than we do when they’re
committed in fiction.
