Elysium depicts a near-future Earth in which the majority of rich and privileged humans have migrated to an orbiting space station which gives the film its title. The city-state hogs the advanced medical resources of Earth, leaving the people on the planet below in a perpetual state of lawlessness and impoverishment. Matt Damon stars as Max Da Costa, a former criminal who, while doing dangerous work, is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation, giving him just five days to live. He soon obtains an exo-suit to augment his failing body. It’s then discovered that Max has data hidden in a chip in his brain that can, in theory, alter the computer systems running Elysium, which will benefit all the people who don’t live there.
Sounds like any kind of “guy with special maguffin takes down patriarchal organization” kind of movie rather than anti capitalist.
What’s really the difference between the two, besides the motivation of the main character?
In the movie, Matt Damon gets lethally injured while working because his boss wants to save money, and is left to die alone afterwards. He uses his remaining time to try and save his life by fighting against the oppressive structures that caused his injury. How would you make the film more anti-capitalist?
You think any of that is specific to capitalism? Money is just a substitute for any other kind of institutional control. He was injured because someone in charge didn’t care, but the means of them being in charge can be anything. It doesn’t have to be “because he was the rich business person”.
He wasn’t injured because his superior didn’t care, he specifically was injured to make his superior more money. He is left to die because he doesn’t have any economic worth left.
In that case, how can a movie be anti-capitalist? Capitalism doesn’t have one defining feature that’s not present in any other system, it’s defined by the interactions of its features. No matter what features any movie focuses on, you can always say that that’s just a substitute of a similar feature in other systems.
Economic value of a person isn’t something that runs out and gets left behind only in capitalism.
There are some defining traits of capitalism that a movie could probably attack. I’d start with the obnoxious responsibility haven of the stock market. It’s inherently detrimental because it incentivises people who make the companies they represent do worse. I’d also take some shots at IP trolls, though I’m not really sure if that’s inherent to capitalism.
I’m not 100% sure what responsibility you’re referring to regarding the stock market, but if you’re pointing at short-term profits at the cost of long-term status - that’s not a capitalism-specific issue. It’s worse because of the reach of investors, but that’s more related to technological advancements.
So that’s also not good enough. Any other ideas? Or can anti-capitalist movies just not exist?
Ahh sorry, I had a typo. Haven became haven’t.
That’s actually exactly what I mean! The mechanisms of influence will always propagate themselves. You can use control to expand your control, so you have a power grabbing feedback loop! That is a failing of every economic model, but especially so with capitalism. In the US, we can vote on what the government does itself, but most of what is done is done privately or by corporations. Therefore having money means your vote decides more of what happens in the world. That’s self propagating control.
But that’s my point - under different economic systems, investors have a similar reach. Since you’re requiring the anti-capitalist message to be unique to capitalism, and capitalism has no unique features, there can’t be any anti-capitalist art, right?
Well there’s definitely unique features. There just aren’t any in the description of the movie that I read.
I think you’re confusing anti-capitalism with socialist. There are plenty of people who criticize capitalist excess without being aware that the excess is fundamental to the system.
Idk how you come to that conclusion.
You’re the guy who thinks Elysium didn’t have an anti-capitalist message, man, we’re just trying to figure out the malfunction.
No no no, I haven’t seen it. I’m remarking about the description of it here.
The malfunction is that people with influence will always abuse it selfishly. There are ways each and every economic model exaggerate that. Addressing those problems is only really good for patching up that system rather than replacing it with new problems.
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