Whose side is Civil War on?
Many of the negative responses to Civil War boil down to Alex Garland’s failure to tell us whose side he is on.
Whose side is Civil War on?
Many of the negative responses to Civil War boil down to Alex Garland’s failure to tell us whose side he is on.
People went in to Civil War expecting the thrill of confirmation bias, of being told that our side, in the ever more polarised politics of the United States, is the right side.
Instead Alex Garland throws in references to right-wing militias and “Portland Maoists” that suggest he’s not very happy with either side.
Texas allying with California is a useful way of indicating that this civil war is not between the sides we might expect. But it’s also a MASSIVE complement to California and Texas. When the chips are down, and tyranny is arising, America’s two most powerful states will overcome any difference and unite to fight for liberty.
Let’s hope that is so.
Because Alex Garland isn’t angry with Texans or Californians. He isn’t angry with Liberals or with Conservatives. Alex Garland isn’t angry with Americans. Alex Garland isn’t even angry with war.
Alex Garland is angry with all the people, left or right, Texan or Californian, American or otherwise
Performatively LARPing our way towards a senseless conflict
just because the LARP is quite entertaining
The self-censorship to appease an algorithm is dystopian. I'd much rather just read your essay than listen to a disfigured recording of it over the same short loop of images from the movie I've seen in a dozen other video essays.
Beyond that, yes, LARPing with guns is dangerous.
It's hard for me to get out to see a movie in the theater, so I'll catch this one at home in a few months, but I trust Alex Garland to show me something interesting, and I'd be far less interested in seeing this movie if the people who castigate the film and film-maker for fence-sitting liked it. If it became a cause celeb of the NPR/NYT set, I'd have no interest in it.
Finally, I don't think Margaret Atwood would agree that this film is science fiction since it doesn't feature robots, time travel, or giant squid from Saturn. If this film is science fiction, then Oryx and Crake is science fiction. Atwood insists that it isn't.
I prefer a more expansive definition of science fiction which would encompass Civil War and Oryx and Crake, but I also like science fiction that puts significant distance between itself and the contemporary political/social scene. I don't make a habit of reading so-called literary fiction because, when I do, it often comes across as such a slanted take on reality that it feels dishonest.
I read "When the Killing's Done" by T.C. Boyle for a book club a few years ago. The characters were such obvious masks for the author's ideological pet peeves the whole book came across as a screed rather than a story. It would have felt more honest to make the invasive rats into rat people and turn the channel islands into a nature preserve planet on which the galactic park service was about to exterminate the invasive rattlings.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing Civil War at home later this year.