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.
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.
Can you list some? As I’ve already said, I am not aware of any features that define capitalism which aren’t also present in some other economic system.
I think it might have been in another thread where I was trying to come up with some. I think the stock market’s way of giving more vote to people with more money is a particularly capitalist fail.
Isn’t that arguably how every system has worked? Say we’re going back a couple centuries - power mostly lied with banks and those who already had money, since their loans were important for many businesses. Look for example at the Fugger family - incredibly rich bankers with control over much of the European economy, and they were literally venture capitalists in the 15th & 16th century. Money has always given people leverage, the stock market is just a codified form (that still isn’t fully equal due to different kinds of shares, so really no different from previous power structures).