How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything

Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by anigbrowl on Friday November 14, 2014 @09:05PM (#8610606)

As someone who works in the film industry, Hollywood makes movies that reflects the public's hopes and fears. It doesn't do dystopia for its own sake, any more than it does mindless techno-optimism. Picking out the re-release of Blade Runner as an example of what Hollywood churns out 'like clockwork' seems self-contradictory to say the least.

On the larger question of why we don't have a lobby to fund basic research, I don't know - perhaps because nobody wants to expend political capital on research that might not be patentable or commercially exploitable, plus you could argue that private capital is already performing effectively in that area. I think it's absurd to pin the blame on Hollywood and think it's more to do with the limitations of our geographically representative form of government, which makes alternative electoral structures like party lists impossible. Probably the best hope for blue-sky scientific research is a new cold war, sadly :-(

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Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by wozniacki on Friday November 14, 2014 @09:38PM (#8610667)

For someone who "works" in the film industry, you seem to be gleefully unaware of Hollywood's fondness for dystopia.

Interstellar might be one of the few newer breed of films that actually casts human space travel in some positive light.

In fact one is left wanting for instances of the "techno-optimism" - mindless or otherwise - that you describe of, in Hollywood flicks.

List of dystopian films

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dystopian_films

A simple Google search

http://i.imgur.com/hHvy0rN.png

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Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by anigbrowl on Friday November 14, 2014 @10:06PM (#8610702)

Hollywood is fond of conflict because that's where drama comes from, as observed by Aristotle a couple of millenia ago. Nobody is interested in a story where the protagonist doesn't have any problems, which is why there's a genral shortage of utopian literature in the first place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_utopian_literature

A good number of the films listed by Wikipedia as dystopian technology is working out just fine for most people while disenfranchising a few - much as in our own world. Insofar as dystopianism is aesthetically fashionable it's largely reflective of contemporary economic or political anxieties rather than being predicated on technology. Total recall (both versions) are listed as dystopian, for example, but those films are quite neutral on the impact of technology - the dystopian element is that of economic coercion resulting from a natural monopoly (oxygen on Mars in the original; the labor supply chain in the remake).

I could dig into examples at length and compare them with positive and negative views of the future from earlier eras of film, but I'm not sure it would be worth the effort given your needlessly snide tone.

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Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by Evolved on Saturday November 15, 2014 @12:06AM (#8610894)

You might have missed the part where the sole premise of Interstellar was that they were leaving Earth to explore other planets because of how bad Earth had become. I.e. a dystopian future.

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